The prisoner occupancy ratio in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh jails is the worst in the country’, according to the India Report (IJR)-2022, released a few days ago by Tata Trusts. While Uttarakhand has a prison occupancy of 185% against capacity in its 11 jails, UP’s is at 184.8% and Madhya Pradesh at 164.1%, the report points out.
As per the report, which surveyed prisons in 18 large and mid-sized states of the country, southern states fare much better in terms of prison occupancy. Tamil Nadu is ranked best among all the states surveyed, with a prison occupancy of 76.4%, followed by Kerala (89.8%) and Andhra Pradesh (90.7%).
Uttarakhand, ranked at the bottom of the list, has a capacity of 3,741 in its 11 jails including the central jail, with 6,921 inmates lodged in them, as of December 2021, when the data was collected. The state’s prison occupancy was categorised as severe (150-185%) along with other states/UTs like MP, UP and Delhi.
Similarly, there were six states mentioned in the category of very high prison occupancy (120-150%) that include Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Jharkhand. Of the total 1,314 jails in India, 391 jails –30% — had a prison occupancy of over 150%, the report said.
In terms of the number of jails with over 150% occupancy, UP topped the list with 57 out of 74 jails, followed by MP with 40 (out of 131 jails) and West Bengal 36 (out of 60 jails).
The report also ranked Uttarakhand as ‘last’ in the category of availability of medical officers in jails. The Himalayan state has only one doctor for 6,921 inmates against the sanctioned positions of 10 doctors. Andhra Pradesh fared as ‘best’ in this regard with one doctor for every 418 inmates. Uttarakhand also had maximum vacancies (77.1%) for prison officers among all the 18 states. Kerala had the least vacancies with 6.9%.