India’s prison system, consisting of 1,378 prisons, is designed to hold a maximum of 403,739 people. On July 16, Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana noted that the prisons held 610, 000 people. By July 17, that number was just under 620,000. Today, July 19, that number is 626,259, and rising. As of last count, India’s `correctional’ system is currently at 155% capacity. According to Chief Justice Ramana, 80% of incarcerated people are awaiting trial and presumed to be innocent. As Chief Justice Ramana noted, “In the criminal justice system, the process is a punishment. From indiscriminate arrest to difficulty in obtaining bail, the process leading to prolonged incarceration of undertrial prisoners needs urgent attention. Prisons are black boxes. Prisoners are often unseen, unheard citizens.” While the cloak of coerced silence and visibility cuts across several sectors, in each, the epicenter is women, and that is intentional.
Where are the women? Everywhere and nowhere. When it comes to overcrowded carceral spaces for women, six states lead: Uttarakhand, 156.5%; Uttar Pradesh, 140.6%; Chhattisgarh, 136.5%; Maharashtra, 105.8%; Jammu and Kashmir, 104.1%; and Jharkhand, 102.6%. Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Jammu and Kashmir, and Jharkhand have no dedicated women’s jails; women are housed in enclosures in men’s prisons, designed for men. The process is the punishment. While this `unprecedented overcrowding” is shocking, it’s no surprise.
In 2015, 612 women in Tihar Jail, New Delhi’s Central Jail, refused to accept `the process’. They informed the State that they had been in prison awaiting trial for more than half of the maximum sentence for their various crimes. Responding to a letter by Supreme Court Justice Kurian Joseph, the Delhi High Court decided to take over. Justice Joseph had written directly to the Delhi High Court Chief Justice G. Rohini, the High Court’s first woman Chief Justice, “earnestly” requesting her “to take up the matter appropriately so that the cry for justice is answered in accordance with law with the promptitude with which a mother responds to the cry of her child”. In a plea to Justice Joseph, the 612 women in Tihar Jail described the cruel separation from their children six years and older; the severe overcrowding of the women’s jail; the insufferable delay in disposal of their cases; the unjust bail bonds conditions; the “lack of sympathy” from the jailhouse courts and doctors; and the inadequacy of legal aid made available to women prisoners. The women asked to be released immediately on personal bond. Testifying before the High Court, the Delhi government agreed: “Out of 622 inmates, 463 are undertrial prisoners, and there are only 159 convicts.” The Delhi government advocate noted that Jail No. 6, the women’s jail, was designed to hold a maximum of 400 women, and at that point, seven years ago, held 622. Effectively, one State agency told another State agency it was time to let my non-people go.
In 2019, after a bit of a delay, the National Crimes Record Bureau, NCRB, finally released its Prison Statistics India 2016 Report, which reported that, in 2016, 67% of India’s prisoners were “undertrial”. 72% of women prisoners were awaiting trial. Much more than with male prisoners, women prisoners were overwhelming young, minimally educated, poor … and formally innocent. Additionally, there were 1,809 children in prisons and jails across India, and they were all cared for by their incarcerated mothers. Of the 1809 children living behind bars, 78% of their mothers were awaiting trial, minimally educated, poor … and formally innocent.
And then came Covid.
In 2020, India’s Supreme Court, on its own, recommended various measures to control the spread of Covid in prisons and jails. In 2021, the same Supreme Court ordered state authorities to reduce arrests and decongest jails and prisons. States convened “high-powered committees” which came up with presumably high-powered plans. Today, those prisons and jails suffer unprecedented overcrowding. The last two years saw a 30% rise in incarceration numbers. From 2019 to this year, Haryana’s prison population went from 105.78% capacity to 224.16%. Uttar Pradesh went from 167.9% to 198.8%. Bihar went from a `respectable’ 94.2% to 164.3%.
Maharashtra has 60 central and district jails. Of them, one, Byculla Women’s Jail, is the only one dedicated for women and children. In 2020, Byculla Women’s Jail was at 101.5% of capacity, in the midst of the ferocious first wave that hit India, and Mumbai in particular, where Byculla is located. On March 31, 2020, Byculla, capacity 200, held 352 women. That’s 176% occupancy rate. In September 2021, when Covid raged through Byculla, the jail held close to 300 women. According to activist Sudha Bharadwaj, her Byculla unit housed 75 women. It had a maximum capacity of 35. Women slept side by side by side on the floor, each on a mat the “size of a coffin. Overcrowding becomes a source of fights and tensions. There’s a queue for everything – food, toilets.” 24% of the women in Sudha Bharadwaj’s unit were infected with Covid: “The judiciary should consider decongesting our jails more seriously. Even during the pandemic most people did not get interim bail to return to their families.” In April 2021, Byculla accounted for 33% of the Covid cases in Mumbai’s five jails.
The judiciary should consider decongesting our jails more seriously. The judiciary did consider decongesting the jails more seriously, and today the women’s carceral spaces are more overcrowded than ever. For women in India, the process – rule of law, due process, presumption of innocence, innocence itself, justice itself – is the punishment.
(By Dan Moshenberg)
(Art Work: Arun Ferreria / Free Them All)
