1.

1 STATUS OF PRISONERS OR UNDERTRIAL PRISONERS (UTPs) IN USA

One of the most threatening challenges confronting our criminal justice system today is the
overcrowding of our nation’s prisons. The past decade has witnessed a doubling of the
number of adult offenders brought before our courts. Amongst our previous studies of prison
conditions around the world, to analyze the socio legal aid services for the marginalized
under trials prisoners during Covid-19 is of paramount importance. Through a series of
investigations, we try to highlight issues that affect a significant proportion of the national
prison population.

This chapter examines the unique set of changes that many prisoners are forced to undergo in
order to survive the prison experience. Prisoners in the United States and elsewhere have
always confronted a unique set of contingencies and pressures to which they were required to
react and adapt in order to survive the prison experience.

While the overcrowding of imprisonment is a problem of endemic proportions around the

world, the human rights violations associated with this practice are particularly terrible in the
context of the United States. With an imprisonment rate five to ten times that of other western
democracies, the United States has less than five percent of the world’s population, but our
country’s prisoners account for one quarter of the global prison population. (American civil
liberties union, 2015)

Surging prison populations and public reluctance to fund new construction produced
dangerously overcrowded prisons. Violence continued to be pervasive: in 1997, near about
sixty-nine inmates were killed by other inmates, and thousands were injured seriously enough
to require medical attention. The local jails were dirty, unsafe and lacked areas in which
inmates could exercise or get fresh air.

Also some jail authorities placed inmates in restraining devices for long periods far in excess
of legitimate safety considerations. Severe overcrowding coupled with inadequate staffing in
many jails created dangerous conditions reflected in the numbers of inmates injured in fights,
who experienced seizures and other medical emergencies without proper attention, and who
managed to escape. (Human Rights watch prison project)