Death penalty: How to ensure fair sentencing

The imagination of legal representation in capital cases is limited to lawyers. Mitigation, however, needs to be conducted by individuals trained in social work, sociology or psychology.

Maitreyi Misra29 September 2022NCRB, Mental Health, Prison Statistics

Deciding the rarest of the rare

The Supreme Court has done well to acknowledge that capital punishment needs closer scrutiny and referring the matter to a five-judge bench. The problem that the Supreme Court’s reference to a Constitution Bench seeks to remedy is the need to achieve consistency on the requirements of a fair, meaningful and effective sentencing hearing

Anup Surendranath & Maitreyi Misra27 September 2022NCRB, Mental Health, Prison Statistics

What numbers don’t tell us

To resolve the mental health crisis in prison, a purely medical approach will take us only so far. We need to take a more all-encompassing approach, move beyond treatment of individuals and towards identifying the social and underlying determinants of mental health in prisons.