Odisha jails get breathing room with 66% occupation: PSI report

Overflowing prison is a common sight in the country. But Odisha has managed to buck the trend, recording an occupancy rate of 66%, according to the Prison Statistics India (PSI) 2024 report. The state reduced its prison occupancy rate from 99.1% in 2021 to 66% in 2024. During the same period, it increased its capacity from 20,987 to 25,176, marking a 19.9% rise. Currently, Odisha prisons house 16,617 inmates.

The high population in India’s prisons is mostly fuelled by the high undertrial population. While undertrials make up 72.6% of the total prison population across the country, 77.5% of Odisha’s prison population are undertrials — that’s 12,879 out of its 16,617 inmates.

The solution to high prison occupancy relies not just on infrastructure but on the mindset that the Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasised upon — bail is the norm, not jail. Despite this, the India Justice Report (IJR) 2025 found that decadal data shows the proportion of undertrial population spending 1-3 years has increased in nearly all states and UTs, averaging a jump of 4.14 percentage points nationally.

In Odisha, the capacity expansion followed an intervention by Orissa high court. In May 2021, a two-judge bench of Chief Justice S Muralidhar and Justice Savitri Ratho said, “There is an urgent need to decongest the jails and to accommodate the prisoners in excess of the holding capacity of the jail concerned to other safe and secure premises in a phased manner, which could be done by upgrading other state buildings/facilities to meet the requirements of prisons.”

Consequently, the state sanctioned Rs 39 crore for modernisation during the financial year 2022-2023, 56% more than the sanctioned amount for FY 2021-2022, alongside Rs 10 crore for repair works.

This policy shift is reflected in IJR 2025, where Odisha improved from 11th to 6th position. “Nationally too, the occupancy rates have come down. For Odisha, it was the effect of the national trend and the HC’s intervention that helped in this drastic improvement,” said Valay Singh, lead and co-founder of IJR.

Beyond expansion, decentralisation contributed to this shift. Out of its total 92 jails, Odisha operates 60 sub-jails, the second highest in the country. As per PSI 2024, Odisha’s central jails (7) have an occupancy rate of 76.2%, while its district (17) and sub-jails (60) are 84.9% and 44.5% full. The state also has a women jail with occupancy of 29.1%, special jails (6) with 74.7% occupancy, and an open jail with an occupancy rate of 28.8%.

Commenting on this setup, Singh said, “In the sub-jail infrastructure, the prisoners are presumably closer to their place of residence. This helps with family visits. In a large state like Odisha, it instinctively makes sense to have sub-jails.”

Kritika Swami, a criminal justice educator, added, “Smaller prisons are much more efficient. They can be handled much better on a day-to-day basis.” Swami noted that while states like Maharashtra had many sub-jails decades ago that fell into disuse, Odisha actively utilizes them. This counters the broader national model.

Operating sub-jails requires adequate personnel, a metric where Odisha reports 996 vacant posts, or 31% of its sanctioned strength. However, the IJR 2025 found, “Over the five years between 2018 to 2022, it reduced officer vacancies from 46% to 14% even as it increased its sanctioned strength.” The report added, “The state’s overall sanctioned budget has also increased by 41%.”

Odisha also leads in mandated prison oversight. “PSI data presently captures the total number of visits made in each year in each state without disaggregating by district or prison. Even that presents a dismal picture. At the mandated rate of one visit per quarter, India’s 775 districts would require 3,100 visits per year at a minimum. But only 899 visits were made. Only Odisha with 138% visits exceeded the minimum, while 10 states/UTs reported no visits,” the IJR pointed out.