Are all Indian jails are full to capacity as its occupancy rate is well over 112 percent?

Prison Institutions are one of the three main constituents of the Criminal Justice System.  Prison and its administration is a State subject under Constitution of India. Prison establishments in different States/UTs comprise several tiers of Jails. The most common and standard Jail Institutions which are in existence in the States/UTs are better known as Central Jails, District Jails and Sub Jails. The other types of jail establishments are Women Jails, Borstal Schools, Open Jails and Special Jails.

In India, there are in total 1382 jails with total capacity of 3,32,782 by the end of the year 2011.  Most of the jails are sub jails and their number is 809 and have the total capacity of 50,908 which is just 15% of total capacity in our jails. There are only 333 district level jails, but their capacity is 1,24,768 (37.5%). Thus, many districts are not having jails within the district.   Central level jails are bigger and are 123 in number in India.  Their total capacity is 1,37,249 which comprise over 41% of the total capacity.  Nineteen jails have been characterized as women jails which have only women inmates.  Open jails are 44 in number with a capacity of 3766 and Borstal Schools are 21 with capacity of 2218 in India.  9279 is capacity of 30 special jails and only 3 are other jails with capacity of 323. No Borstal School, Open Jail and other jail exist in any of the union territories at the end of 2011.

The occupancy rate of our prisons is over 100% in 2009 (123%), 2010 (115%) and it is 112% in the year 2012.  Thus, there are some jails with less than 100% occupancy and over 112% in the year 2011. The capacity in UP is the highest (47048) and the occupancy rate is 175% which is also second highest among various states. Chattishgarh had the highest occupancy rate of 256% among the various states, but its capacity is only 5430.  Bihar is the second highest state which is having the capacity of 33774, but the occupancy rate was 83% - well manageable in the year 2011.  Out of various states, jails in North Eastern States were having less than 100% occupancy rate except for Assam and Meghalaya states where it was around 110% with capacity of just 7485 and 530 respectively.  Out of various UTs, the occupancy rate was highest in Lakshadweep at the level 500%.  It was mainly due its low capacity of just 16. But Andaman & Nicobar Islands with capacity of 309 had occupancy rate of 362%.  Delhi with capacity of 6250 had one of the highest capacity of 194%.  Among Haryana and Punjab, Haryana with capacity of 16049 had 94% occupancy and Punjab with capacity of 11951 had 149% occupancy.  Clearly, inmate population in Punjab is more than what we have in Haryana.  Although the capacity in Maharashtra, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu is well over 20000, but the number of its inmates were quite manageable well within their capacity resources.

Thus, we find that even though the occupancy rate is more that 100% at the All-India level, but management of inmates only problem was in the states of Chattishgarh, UP, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Assam and a few UTs as stated above.