Prisoners of process

Prison decongestion schemes have been suboptimal

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Union Home Minister Amit Shah's statement on releasing on Constitution Day undertrial prisoners who have served more than a third of the maximum prescribed sentence for the crime they have supposedly committed is a well-meaning attempt to decongest India's notoriously overcrowded prisons. But much would depend on jail authorities' ability to compile and process lists in less than a week. The sheer magnitude of the task is daunting.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, undertrials comprise 75 per cent of India's prison population, which has risen 41 per cent since 2017. This situation prevails in spite of efforts to ease congestion in jails for the past 19 years.