Over 70% of Assam’s jail inmates are under-trials, only 29.1 % convicts: MHA data

Guwahati, Oct 19: A large majority of the inmate population lodged in jails of Assam are ‘under-trials’ and less than 30 per cent are ‘convicts’. There were a total of 10,652 prison inmates in the State as on December 31, 2023. Of the total, as many as 70.8 per cent were under-trials, while 29.1 per cent were convicts and the remaining 0.1 per cent were ‘detenues’, as per latest official data released by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

The population of prison inmates in Assam consisted of 3,096 convicts and 7,546 under-trials at the end of 2023.

Prison inmates lodged in jails are categorized as convicts, under-trials and detenues. A convict is a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court of law and who is serving a sentence in prison.

An under-trial is one who is currently on trial in a court of law, while a detenue is any individual held lawfully in custody. In addition, there is also an ‘Other’ category among prisoners.

In Assam, there were 10 detenues as of the last day of 2023. However, there were no prison inmates in the ‘Other’ category in the State during the year under review.

According to the data, out of the total convicts, 3,020 were male and 76 were female. On the other hand, among the under-trials lodged in the jails of Assam, 7,217 were male and 329 were female.

All the 10 detenues were male as on December 31, 2023. With regard to the convicts in Assam, 1,011 were lodged in central jails, 1,982 were lodged in district jails, 18 in sub-jails, 19 in open jails, and 66 were in special jails.

Similarly, among the under-trial prisoners, 3,192 were lodged in central jails, 3,922 in district jails, 39 in sub-jails, and 393 were in special jails of the State on the last day of 2023. All the 10 detenues on that date were lodged in central jails.

Of the total number of convicts in the jails of Assam, 593 (or 19.2 per cent) were in the age group of 18-30 years, 1,842 (59.5 per cent) were in the 31-50 age group, and 661 (21.4 per cent) were 51 years of age and above.

At the same time, of the under-trials lodged in prisons, 3,402 (or 45.1 per cent) were of 18-30 years age group, 3,312 (43.9 per cent) were of 31-50 age, and another 832 (11 per cent) were in the age group of 51 years or above at the end of 2023.

Of all the convicts who were lodged in the jails of Assam, as many as 3,025 were residents of the State, 64 were from other States of India, and seven were foreigners.

In the case of under-trial inmates, 6,705 belonged to the State, 778 hailed from other States, and 63 were from other countries. All 10 detenues residing in prisons of Assam on the last day of 2023 hailed from other States of the country. Nationally, the percentage share of convicts, under-trials, detenues and other inmates was reported at 25.6 per cent, 73.5 per cent, 0.7 per cent and 0.2 per cent, respectively. Convicted prisoners continued to be less in numbers than the under-trials inmates in the country as a whole as well as in all the States and Union Territories (UTs), barring the Andaman & Nicobar Islands.