Mint spoke to Vijay Raghavan to assess how India is faring in its efforts to control the covid-19 spread inside prisons. Raghavan is a professor at the Centre for Criminology and Justice at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai.
He also leads Prayas, a TISS initiative promoting social work in criminal justice. On paper, he said, India has taken the right steps to decongest prisons.
Yet, an on-ground assessment shows the conditions remain dire. Edited excerpts from an interview:In March, most states and Union territories had expressed willingness to decongest their prisons.
Did they live up to their word?On the direction of the Supreme Court, the states and Union territories had set up a high-powered committee (HPC) to.