Overcrowded Prisons, Bail And The Legal Response – A Pandemic Perspective

Anshika Tiwari, Hidayatullah National Law University

Introduction

We have come close to completing two years of the onset of a global pandemic. When the first case of COVID 19 came to light in December 2019, little did the world know that the disease would assume shape of a worldwide health emergency in no time and would transform every aspect of life from head to toe. Battling the virus wasn’t easy for any nation, given the nature of its spread. Consequently everyone, especially developing nations like India were as underprepared as they could be to handle the massive health hazard. Extraordinary measures such as restricting movements and imposing curfews and lockdowns became the need of the hour therefore. In dealing with the situation, many issues surfaced as impediments for the authorities to be able to smoothly combat the virus. One of these has been the problem of overcrowded prisons in India. Not that the issue was something new for the government; but it received its hitherto lacking share of attention during the pandemic. Overflowing prisons coupled with already existing issues like lack of hygiene and basic facilities of medication and sanitation aggravated the problem and made social distancing protocols extremely difficult to follow. Consequently, prisons emerged as hotspots of infection during the first and the second waves in particular.1 Prison fatalities due to COVID 19 were not specific to any one country but nearly 47 nations around the globe reported a total of 4000 deaths.

“The statistics yielded by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) suggests that as on May 2021, the count of prison inmates affected by the virus was over 5.5 lakh in 122 countries.”