'ANNUAL REPORT OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE BOMBAY PRESIDENCY, FOR THE YEAR 1862-63’ [‎75v] (146/266)

APPENDIX TO JUDICIAL REPORT.
80. In the Dharwar, Sattara, Ahmednuggnr, Sholapoor, Dhoolia, and Surat Jails
a decrease has taken place, which is very marked in the two former. At Ahmedabad it
amounts only to four annas and ten pies. This general decrease is pe,- se satisfactory,
and has been effected in spite of the substitution of Military for Police guaids cluiing the
past year in most of the Jails, and in consequence of judicious reduction of sentries and
peons, especially at Sattara and Dharwar, in which the decrease has been respectively
Rs. 29-15-5 and Rs.14-6-2 per head.
81. Comparing, however, the results given above with those of the Jails of the Lower
Provinces, North-West, Oudh, and the Punjaub, the figures are lamentably high. In the
Lower Provinces the cost of each prisoner on account of establishment and guards for 1861
was Rs. 6-12-10; in the North-West Provinces Rs. 17-0-3; in Oudh Rs. 6-6-6, reduced
during 1862 to Rs. 3-13-7 ; and in the Punjaub for 1861 Rs. H-H-l. These compara
tive data are startling, but will, in my opinion, find satisfactory explanation in the fol
lowing reasons.
' 82. In the first place the salaries of establishments are higher in this presidency The name given to each of the three divisions of the territory of the East India Company, and later the British Raj, on the Indian subcontinent.
in proportion to the greater expense of living, even for native servants, than in other
parts of India. In the second, the cost of Military guards is far greater than that ot
Police, which, with the exception of Alipore, are the only guards entertained lor duty
at the Jails in the provinces above-mentioned. In the third, the decreased population
actually confined within the Jails on account of the formation of the road-gangs, and the
difficulty, nay impossibility, in many cases of reducing the establishment and guards at
all in proportion to the reduced strength of the criminal population of the Jails, in con
sequence of many of our ill-constructed buildings not permitting of less efficient custody;
and in the fourth, central prisons, such as Alipore, Agra, Allahabad, Benares, Lucknow,
and Lahore, do no doubt contribute their quota, in their own cases, to the reduction ot
expense by its being shared by so large a number of convicts, and thus extend the
benefit of such reduction generally throughout the Jails in making summary com
parisons.
83. Not a single guard of any description has within my knowledge been in
creased during the year. On the contrary numerous reductions have been effected, as
the results amply testify; and l believe, for the reasons just specified, and from my own
personal knowledge of the working of the principal Jails I have lately visited, including
those enumerated above, that real economy is being practised in our Jails, and that the
comparisons above instituted are not really so unfavourable as they at first sight appear,
and that on the whole the results are as satisfactory as the difficulties and disadvantages
under which the Bombay Jails are labouring will at present permit. I trust these diffi
culties will year by year decrease, and that our financial results will approach, though
they probably never will, for obvious reasons, equal those of the Jails in other parts of
India, where all the necessaries ol life are considerably cheaper and salaries lower, and
wheie, as at Alipore and Hoogly especially, peculiar advantages exist in a ready and
never-failing market for their coarse manufactures, and where there is the support of the
local Government to the working of Typographic and Lithographic A lithograph is an image reproduced from a printing plate whose image areas attract ink and non-image areas repel it. presses at the former,
the net profits from which have been so enormous, viz. Rs. 2,09,605-5-3 during 1861,
as to have conti ibuted mainly to reduce the total average cost per prisoner for all the
Jails in the Lower Provinces to its present very low figure
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