The President’s Warning About Jail Overpopulation Serves As A Wake-Up Call For The Executive And Judicial Branches Of Government

The administration and courts have been urged by President Draupadi Murmu to address the issue of overcrowding in prisons, which is a significant and much-welcomed intervention.

The remark by President Murmu comes in the wake of a contentious discussion on this subject between Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud and Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju last week. Rijiju argued against the higher courts’ involvement in bail decisions and claimed that only trial courts should have the authority to do so. The CJI responded by claiming that bail cases are overflowing in higher courts due to a sense of terror in the lower judiciary.

The current situation is this: Inmates awaiting trial climbed by 45.8% between 2016 and 2021, while the number of prisoners in jail reduced by 9.5%, according to Prison Statistics India 2021, a report released by the Ministry of Home Affairs. The issue of jail overcrowding is mostly an undertrial issue since three out of every four inmates are awaiting trial. About 80% of convicts as of December 31, 2021, were housed for up to a year. According to the research, judges granted bail to a whopping 95% of undertrial detainees who were released in 2021, while only 1.6% were freed after being found not guilty. It demonstrates that the trial courts’ slow process for reaching a verdict cannot keep up with the rising volume of pending cases.

More prisons being built is not the answer, as President Murmu correctly stated. The government was recently urged by the Supreme Court to “think outside the box” and take into account a one-time measure to release prisoners in specific circumstances in honor of the 75th anniversary of Independence. While the top court must make sure that the trial courts adopt its lenient stance on bail, it would be dishonest to refer to the current undertrial crisis as merely a bail issue. The actual solution is to address the root of the problem, which is the indiscriminate arrest of people. There are several issues that the government needs to handle, from introducing special criminal legislation as populist measures to rejecting bail as part of a harsher stance against crime. It is also essential to identify people who cannot afford bail, even when it is offered. Lawmakers must also act quickly to address this crisis.

News Mania Desk