Indian prisons have a capacity of about 450,000 inmates, but at the end of 2024, the country’s prison population stood at 511,000, or 13% over capacity, according to data from the Prisons Statistics India report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).
In addition, data show that about 1.5 million undertrial prisoners, 150,000 convicts and about 9,500 detenues were released on bail during 2024.
Undertrials continue to form a large proportion (73%) of prisoners in custody, even as their numbers fell for the second year in a row. Two in three undertrial prisoners belong to Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or Other Backward Classes communities. Another 26% are Muslim, Sikh or Christian.
About 63% of undertrial prisoners did not study beyond grade X. Nearly half of all undertrial prisoners are under the age of 30, and another 41% are between 30 and 50 years old.
“Younger people are prone to risk-taking behaviour as they are in the process of finding their path to life, and is a reason why the youth are highly overrepresented in criminal justice and prison statistics,” Vijay Raghavan, professor, Centre for Criminology and Justice at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), had told us in October 2025.
“When young undertrials are from poor socio-economic and educational backgrounds, their life chances get reduced. They end up spending more time in prison due to poor social support and may get pulled into a life of crime, which impacts not only them but their families as well,” he had said. “Longer periods of imprisonment can also affect their health including mental health.”
Judicial delays and a lack of legal support means that nearly 30,000 undertrials spent more than three years in prisons awaiting trial and verdict. They account for 8% of prisoners across India, up from 2.5% in 1998.
A 2025 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report estimated that 11.7 million people were detained globally in 2023, nearly 6% more than a decade ago. Of these, about a third were in pre-trial detention. Only seven countries have a higher percentage of undertrial population than India, according to the World Prison Brief.
By the end of 2024, undertrial prisoners accounted for 72.6% of India's prison population, up from 66.2% in 2005. Their share peaked at 77.1% in 2021 before declining in subsequent years.
Undertrial prisoners are persons held in judicial custody whose criminal cases are pending investigation, inquiry or trial and have not yet been decided by a court.
The number of undertrials increased from 237,076 in 2005 to 371,440 in 2024. Over the same period, India's prison population increased from 358,368 to 511,542.
A primary contributing factor to this trend is the indiscriminate arrests carried out by the police, often without proper consideration, as IndiaSpend reported in August 2022.
Individuals belonging to marginalised communities are disproportionately impacted from these unwarranted detentions, we had reported. Other factors such as limited access to legal assistance and difficulties in meeting bail conditions contribute to the heightened likelihood of underprivileged individuals spending time in prison without being convicted.
Among major states, Bihar recorded the highest undertrial share in its prison population at 87.2%, followed by Maharashtra at 80.8%. Delhi recorded an undertrial share of 88%, while Jammu and Kashmir recorded 84.6%.
Jails are also short-staffed: The sanctioned strength of jail staff was 99,758, while the actual strength was 63,004.
By the end of 2024, nearly 30,000 prisoners (8.1%) had spent more than three years in custody, an increase from 2.5% in 1998. Of these, more than 9,000 people had been in jail for more than five years.
About a third of undertrial prisoners had spent up to three months, about 20% had spent between three and six months, while about 17% were in custody between six months and one year.
If an accused person spends more than half the potential sentence under the crime for which they are charged, they are eligible to be released on bail under certain conditions, according to Section 436A of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The Code has since been replaced by the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and Section 479 has similar provisions, but adds that in the case of first-time offenders, such persons may be eligible for bail on completion of one-third of the potential sentence. BNSS makes it incumbent upon the superintendent of the jail to make an application to the court in such cases.
In 2024, 968 undertrials were identified for release under these provisions, of whom 627 were released, data show.
A December 2024 government response in Parliament said that administration and management of prisoners, including the issue of addressing overcrowding in prisons, was the responsibility of respective states and Union Territories, as IndiaSpend reported in December 2024.
It went on to highlight steps taken by the Union government in the new criminal laws to address prison overcrowding including BNSS Section 479, pre-trial negotiation between the defendant and the prosecution, using National E-prisons portal for identifying prisoners whose cases are due for consideration by Undertrial Review Committees, and awareness camps in jails on legal aid, plea bargaining, Lok Adalats and legal rights of inmates, including their right to bail.
Persons from Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) communities together accounted for 67.3% of undertrial prisoners in states and Union Territories that reported caste data.
Of the 371,440 undertrial prisoners across India at the end of 2024, caste data were available for 82% or 306,391 undertrials. Maharashtra, Delhi, Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh did not provide caste data.
The share of OBC undertrial prisoners increased from 29% in 2001 to 36% in 2024. SC and ST prisoners together accounted for 31.3% undertrials in 2024. Their combined share was 39.2% in 2001.
Caste prejudices and over-policing of certain communities are important social factors behind the significant presence of marginalised caste groups in jails, as IndiaSpend reported in September 2020. When exacerbated by poverty, the high cost of litigation, and the poor quality of free legal aid, the result is that social inequities in society get replicated inside of prisons.
Further 69,864 (18.8%) were Muslim, 17,916 (4.8%) were Sikh, and 8,885 (2.4%) were Christian.
Every second Indian police person thinks Muslims are “naturally prone towards committing crime”, while about a third think the same of Dalits and tribals, as IndiaSpend reported in August 2019 based on a survey conducted by Common Cause and Lokniti–Centre for the Study Developing Societies, a nonprofit and a think tank, respectively, based in New Delhi.
At the turn of the century, two in five undertrials in Indian prisons were illiterate. By 2024, this number fell to less than a quarter, coinciding with gains in India’s literacy rate.
In 2024, another 40% undertrials had an education under grade X, compared to 38% in 2001. Graduates accounted for 7.4% of undertrials, while 3.2% undertrials had a technical degree, diploma or postgraduate qualification.
“In the absence of data regarding economic status of prisoners, ‘literacy’ serves as a useful proxy to appreciate that, the majority of undertrials belong to the socio-economically marginalized groups,” the Law Commission of India's 268th report noted in May 2017.
IndiaSpend reached out to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs for comment on the undertrial population, prolonged detention, and the implementation of Section 479 of BNSS. We will update this story when we receive a response.
This article is republished from IndiaSpend under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here.
