THE India Justice Report (IJR), which, since 2019, has been reporting on justice delivery in India, reisties in India, 2020. It takes a closer look at prisons through the pandemic with a focus on overcrowding, vacancies and access to hospitals, among others.
It found that prison administration remains tremendously strained by severe capacity deficits. Inmates' access to courts and health services was badly impacted. In the wake of the pandemic and ensuing national lockdown in March 2020, legal services and courts were not designated essential services.
The latest data in Prison Statistics India (PSI) 2020 shows a marked decrease in prisoners' visits to court down nearly a third from roughly 44.5 lakh to 15.5 lakh. Impacted too was inmates' access to health services with the number of visits made by them for medical attendance declining from 4.77 lakh in 2019 to 3.63 lakh in 2020. Visits by medical personnel also reduced from 24,524 in 2019 to 20,871 in 2020. In 2019, 16,178 visits were made by judicial officers, which nearly halved to 9,257 in 2020.
Despite nine lakh more arrests in 2020, the transient number of people entering prisons fell from 19.02 lakh in 2019 to 16.31 lakh in 2020. Major arrests were seen in cases registered under "Other IPC Crimes” from 2,63,138 in 2019 to 1,377,216 in 2020, and under "Hurt Cases” from 6,10,956 in 2019 to 5,80,446 in 2020. In terms of absolute numbers, the prison population grew 1.5% from 4,81,387 in 2019 to 4,88,511 in 2020.
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