Punjab’s soaring prison population a nightmare

As the crime rate in Punjab has risen to alarming levels, an upsurge has also been witnessed in the province’s already crowded jails due the police’s crackdown on alleged criminals.

The records and statistics obtained from the Punjab Home Department by The Express Tribune paint a grim picture: the 42 functional jails across the province have the capacity to hold 36,806 prisoners and detainees, however the current inmate population is 50,789 - a record 38% more than capacity. Cramming the prisons with inmates, like they are livestock, is a serious health hazard and is counterproductive in efforts to combat the spread of highly transmissible diseases inside jails, as per Professor Dr Rizwan Aziz, an expert on infectious diseases.

 “Prisoners and detainees face a decline in their immunity due to lack of timely and adequate food supply and thus the rate of spread of disease increases,” Dr Rizwan explained, “therefore, scabies, allergies, skin diseases, fever, hepatitis, and gastroenteritis are prevalent in jails.”

Dr Rizwan’s claims are seconded by the data obtained by The Express Tribune which shows that in jails across Punjab, 1,457 inmates are suffering from serious diseases - 272 cases of AIDS, 137 cases of hepatitis B, 517 cases of hepatitis C, and 460 cases of diabetes; whereas 59 prisoners are suffering from mental illnesses.

According to Home Department sources, there are only 40 doctors available for the mammoth number of prisoners and 21 prisons have no doctors at all. Zeb Shaukat, who was recently released on bail from Central Jail Lahore - which houses 2,360 inmates compared to its capacity of 3,279 - said that the number of thermometers for checking fever and temperature in the jail was almost non-existent.

“My stomach was often upset because of the lack of clean water,” he said. Similarly, Faiz Tanveer, who was released on bail from the camp jail in Lahore - which has exceeded its capacity of 2,000 inmates by 83% - said that many inmates suffered diseases but medical attention was a luxury. Farah Hashmi, chairperson of a local non-governmental organization (NGO) which advocates for the rights of inmates, said that the government should work with the private sector to organize a medical camp in the jails after at least 6 months so that all the inmates could be looked after. Hashmi regretted that such suggestions always fell on deaf ears as officials did not care for the rights of prisoners.

Sources privy to the matter told The Express Tribune that the construction of two jails in the province namely Borstal Jail Faisalabad and High Security Jail Mianwali has been completed but they are not yet operational and the government has also finalized land for Chiniot and Khushab jails to decrease the burden on existing prison infrastructure. The Express Tribune asked Saeed Ali Murtaza, the Punjab Home Secretary, what was being done as an immediate response apart from construction of jails, to which he replied:

“Where there is a shortage of doctors, they will be deployed in the next few days. According to my records, there is a shortage of 32 doctors in Punjab jails; for this, a panel of doctors’ names has been sent to the provincial health department.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 7^th, 2022.