Report No. 78

1.2. Possible remedies to prevent intermixing.-

There can be no doubt that a large percentage of the inmates of our jails today is constituted by under-trial prisoners. Jails should primarily be meant for lodging convicts and not for housing persons under-trial. The evils of contamination in .jail are well known. This renders it desirable that the two classes of prisoners should be housed separately-a matter to which we shall revert later.1 However provision of separate arrangements for housing them may take some time. Moreover, even after such arrangements are made, it will be necessary to ensure that deprivation of liberty of the under-trial prisoners for a long time is avoided, if it is avoidable without injury to public interest. Actual realities impel us to find solutions to the excessive number of under-trial prisoners in jails.

1. Chapter 8, infra,