The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: The Supreme Court Committee on Prison Reforms has recommended a number of changes to the current functioning of India’s prisons, including mandatory segregation of undertrials, convicts and first-time offenders inside jails, while producing them in courts, during their hospital visits, etc.
“The issue of overcrowding lies majorly with the undertrial population in prisons. Many states have a high number of undertrial prisoners who are languishing in jails for years, awaiting trial. Speedy trial can become the effective tool to address this issue and, hence, following steps can be taken in this regard: (i) special fast track courts to be set up to extensively deal with petty offences and for cases pending for five years or more. This will significantly put a curb on increasing the number of undertrials in prisons,” the committee said, according to The New Indian Express.
The committee is headed by ex-judge Amitava Kumar and comprises Director General of Tihar Prisons and Inspector General of Bureau of Police Research and Development. It was told in 2018 to look into jail reforms, particularly around aspects of overcrowding in prisons, condition of women and children, transgender prisoners, death-row convicts, semi-open or open jails, and reforms in juvenile correctional homes.
“Prison authorities of only 13 states and two Union Territories have designated a ‘complaint officer’ to deal with complaints of violation of rights of transgender inmates in prisons as mentioned under Section 11 of Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019,” the committee noted. “Majority of the states and Union Territories have not formulated welfare schemes for transgender prisoners. Existing welfare schemes are being extended to them. Only seven states and two Union Territories have specifically provided the measures taken by prison authorities to facilitate their access to the relevant welfare schemes.”
As The Wire had highlighted in a report, transgender prisoners in India face multiple problems including sexual violence, harassment and misgendering.
Last week, the Supreme Court had order that this report should be made public, and asked the amicus curiae to provide copies to the Union government and all states. According to Hindustan Times, the bench of Justices Hima Kohli and Rajesh Bindal said that it will first consider the issues pertaining to women and children, transgender prisoners and death row convicts and later address the other issues.
The bench said that a related issue not dealt with by the committee focused on replanning and relocation of jails. “Old jails in cities are mostly single-storeyed. These can be converted into multi-storeyed as jails will not be having additional space to expand,” the judges said.