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‘Reimagining Bail Decision Making: An Analysis of Bail Practice in Karnataka and Recommendations for Reform’

March 30, 2020

India’s ballooning under-trial population is a serious challenge to the effectiveness and legitimacy of the criminal justice system. The most recent, yet dated Prison Statistics released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) in 2018 pegs India’s under-trial prison population at around 67 % or two-thirds of the total prison population. Academic and policy literature on prisons and under-trial detention have conventionally focused on a doctrinal analysis of provisions on bail or on the conditions of detention, relying primarily on data from prisons and police stations, compiled by the NCRB. However, the crucial point of entry of a person into the prison system at first production in the courts after arrest has received no research attention.

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Bail Decision Making: Are the conditions of bail imposed by courts restrictive?

June 27, 2019

In the previous posts on bail decision making in India, we noted the relationship between decision making in lower courts and the under-trial prison population. We suggested that substantive law should separately recognise pre-trial and under-trial detention as considerations while granting bail should be different at each stage. An extension of this is that conditions of bail should also vary depending on the severity of the offence and the stage of the criminal justice process. In this post, we explore the different kinds of conditions that courts regularly imposed in Bengaluru, Tumakuru and Dharwad.