5. India
Prison population: 418.536
With only 33 inmates per 100.000 residents, India has the lowest rate of the prison population among countries on the list. Despite low rate, India struggles with a shortage of prison capacity as all other countries ranked here. In 2014, the number of prisoners exceeded capacity by 17.4 percents and in some prisons occupancy rate was more than 250 percent. Moreover, two-thirds of inmates are pre-trial detainees who spend time behind bars while waiting for sentence.
According to National Crime Records Bureau’s statistics, the greatest percent of these detainees spent up to three months in prison, but there were also 36.000 prisoners who were waiting for court ruling from one to two years. Besides great share of pre-trial detainees in the prison population, a high number of deaths behind bars represents the additional problem. While NCRB states that out of 1702 deaths in prisons in 2014, 1507 were contributed to natural causes, human rights organizations point that this statistics doesn’t reflect reality as many deaths that are the result of torture either go unreported or are attributed to natural causes.
