Giving Compass' Take:

• Prison Statistics India for 2016 were finally released this April after a long, unexplained delay. They omit details about caste and religious identities of the prison population leaving many to wonder what occurs in Indian prisons. 

• What could be possible reasons for this delay and omission? How can funders grow awareness about mass incarceration in India? 

• Here are some prison reform recommendations for prisons across America. 

What happens inside India’s prisons? Many seek answers to this question.

Prison statistics, despite their limitation of being mere numerical representations of harsh realities, have long been considered an “objective” way of answering the question. They have been an important subject of discussion since the 1855 International Statistics Congress in Paris.

In colonial India, Dr FJ Mouat, surgeon and inspector general of prisons for Bengal, regularly submitted statistics from Bengal’s prisons to international conferences as well as the Royal Statistical Society, of which he was president from 1890 to 1892.

In a 1876 lecture at the Royal Statistical Society, Mouat, who attempted several prison rehabilitation measures, said, “It would be difficult to overestimate the value of such records and their value depends entirely upon the minuteness, care, and accuracy with which they are collected.”

Read the full article about a look inside Indian prisons by Nishant Gokhale at India Development Review.