Reducing India’s prison footprint

(MainsGS2:Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.)

Context:

• At the Constitution Day celebrations organized by the Supreme Court in November 2022, President Droupadi Murmu highlighted the plight of prisoners across India.
• She highlighted that prisoners were often unaware of their fundamental rights and had been incarcerated for prolonged periods for minor offences, while their families, struggling with poverty, were unable to bail them out.

Governed by colonial legislation:

• Prisons in India are still governed by the Prisons Act, 1894, a colonial legislation which treats prisoners as sub-par citizens, and provides the legal basis for punishment to be retributive, rather than rehabilitative. 
• These laws are also highly casteist, and remain largely unchanged since they were drafted by the British. For example, some jail manuals continue to focus on purity as prescribed by the caste system, and assign work in prison based on the prisoner’s caste identity. 
• Organizations such as the Vidhi Centre of Legal Policy have taken us one step further in identifying colonial legal continuities that India must shred, and the manner in which she can do so.

Over-representation:

• The National Dalit Movement for Justice and the National Centre for Dalit Human Rights’ report ‘Criminal Justice in the Shadow of Caste’ explains the social, systemic, legal, and political barriers that contribute to this. 
• Legislations such as the Habitual Offenders Act and Beggary Laws allow the police to target them for reported crimes.
• The primary reason why prisons are overcrowded is because India has not done enough to truly prevent crime as our approach to crime should be preventive, rather than reactive.

Take preventive measures:

• It is helpful to look towards President Murmu’s timely and emphatic clarion call at the Constitutional Day speeches, where she insightfully noted that progress is antithetical to setting up prisons, and we must address congestion in prisons in non-carceral ways. 
• These could include releasing unwell or old inmates, reducing penalties, allowing bail at affordable costs, employing anti-carceral ways of holding people accountable for their crimes, and expediting trials.
• We must take preventive measures before we realise that we have travelled far down this road, and have subjected several people to unnecessary trauma and confinement.

Conclusion:

• As the three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court led by Justice U.U. Lalit recently quoted Oscar Wilde while commuting a death sentence, we must recognise that ‘Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.’