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Bhubaneswar, Dec 8: Only four psychiatrists are available at any moment to check the mental fitness of 14,473 inmates lodged in 85 jails across the state, according to the state prison administration.
Bishnu Charan Prusty, additional IG of prisons, told Orissa Post, “The four psychiatrists are stationed at Cuttack, Baripada, Brahmapur and Sambalpur circle jails. In the other jails, inmates are sent to nearby government hospitals if anyone is found to be suffering from any kind of mental illness.”
Prusty admitted there is no full-time psychiatrist for the other 81 jails and said prison officials have to depend on government hospitals for prisoners suffering from mental ailments.
Incidentally, Orissa ranks second in the country to have the maximum number of inmates with mental illness at 577, after Gujarat which is first with 633, according to statistics released a couple of weeks ago by the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB).
Of the 577 inmates, 348 are convicts serving sentences for more than two years, and 229 are under-trials suffering from mental illness. Despite such a high number of mentally-ill prisoners, the prison administration is unfazed by the situation and takes solace from a statistic that it has twisted to its advantage, that is having a low percentage of mentally-ill prisoners vis-à-vis total number of prisoners.
“We have around 3,508 convicts lodged in our jails, of which 348 are suffering from psychological problems which is only 10 per cent of the total number,” said Prusty.
According to the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, an international NGO working for prisoners’ rights in the commonwealth countries, every central and district prison should have the services of a qualified psychiatrist, who should be assisted by a psychologist and psychiatry social worker.
For the year 2013-14, the state government allocated Rs 15,163.2 lakh for the prison administration, of which only Rs 8,930 lakh was spent.
“In USA, providing counseling and psychological help to inmates is mandatory and a regular practice, whereas in India it’s an unknown field. Unless jail reform policy does not include psychiatrist help for inmates, the scenario is not going to change,” said a counseling psychologist.
“Prisoners are likely to suffer from depression or get sucked into serious mental illness. Counselling should not just be a part of post-conviction help provided to inmates, but also a pre-conviction practice.”
The additional IG said the prison administration is considering proposing for a mental hospital exclusively for inmates.