In 2018, the Supreme Court of India stated that the overcrowding of women’s prisons in India is a violation of human rights, mandating High Courts to take this up in immediate priority, further stating that a report must be completed by June 2018 by the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD). Reports have shown that almost every women’s prison in the country has occupancy beyond 100% of its capacity, and some even have occupancy beyond 150%. This is a concern that has serious repercussions in other aspects of health and life for women in these prisons. Projecting this as a human rights violation is no exaggeration.
The June report by the MWCD revealed that Indian prisons have about 17,834 women, of which only about 17% live in exclusively female prisons. Various visits by national and international organizations, government bodies and their officials have revealed severe overcrowding, lack of staff – including guards, officers, doctors and counsellors. They also reported inadequate accommodation arrangements including inadequate number of toilets, bathrooms and basic preconditions for sanitation and hygiene, insufficient provision of water and menstrual hygiene products, and a lack of female medical personnel. Further, there was shown to be consequences of this overcrowding, including the lack of access to education for women where skill and vocational training was missing, and there was a lack of legal aid cells in prisons to facilitate the complaints, appeals and under-trials of prisoners.
Moreover, the lack of sufficient staff resulted in oversight of prison decorum and prisoner safety, including a massive occurrence of sexual and physical violence in prisons, both at the hands of other prisoners as well as authorities. Further, in crowded prisons, fewer prisoners gain access to visitation and calls, thus being unable to stay in touch with the outside world and maintain a social network to ease their transition once they are released.
What Can Be Done?
Firstly, and most importantly, a large number of prisoners in the overcrowded women’s jails are undertrial prisoners. As per the MWCD report and various other comments by officials and ministers in India, there is a need to take steps to facilitate their early release under Section 436A of the Code of Criminal Procedure, as well in cases where the prisoners are unable to pay sureties on release. There is also a need to improve the pace at which courts deal with cases involving women, and employ more staff in these jails. Infrastructure needs to be developed to accommodate the large number of women prisoners, to reduce the increasing human rights violations that occur on a weekly, if not daily basis.