Small states have huge proportion of habitual offenders returning to jails; not a single one in Maha, Guj in 2019

Mizoram, Delhi, Nagaland, Meghalaya, and Andaman and Nicobar Islands are among the tiny states or union territories in the country but when it comes to habitual offenders returning to jails, they share the ignominy of being on the top.

In contrast, the big states of Maharashtra and Gujarat did not have a single habitual offender among the prisoners who were convicted last year.

While the national average of habitual offenders returning to jails after a repeated conviction was pegged at 3.6%, their proportion in these states were higher.

Of the 1.88 lakh convicts who were sent to jails in India after conviction in 2019, 6,756 were habitual offenders or recidivists. Recidivism is defined as the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend.

Mizoram has the worst record with 45.5% or 779 of 1,716 people who were convicted and jailed last year, the latest Prison in India 2019 report by the National Crime Records Bureau said on recidivism.

Almost one-third of Delhi's prisoners who were convicted by courts in 2019 were habitual offenders -- 32.4% or 1,120 out of 3,455 people. Nagaland comes a distant third with 12.2% (19 out of 156), Meghalaya 10.7% (13 out of 122) and Andaman and Nicobar Islands 9.8% (8 out of 82).

However, Maharashtra and Gujarat had hundreds of new convicts in 2019 but none of them were habitual offenders. Maharashtra had 12,809 people getting convicted in 2019 while Gujarat had 5,766 such people but none of them were habitual offenders.

These two were among six other states Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur and Sikkim did not have a habitual offender getting convicted last year. Three union territories -- Lakshadweep, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu -- also join them in this category.

When it comes to absolute numbers, Uttar Pradesh was listed on the top with 1,247 such prisoners out of 29,496 convicted last year. Telangana had 502 habitual offenders out of 27,591. In Karnataka, 3.4% -- 124 out of 3,698 -- were convicts who were jailed during 2019.

Kerala, the state with the highest literacy rate, also comes in top five with 421 (7.8% of convicts last year) habitual offenders getting jailed. Punjab (392), Andhra Pradesh (240) and Jharkhand (220) are other states which have higher number of habitual offenders entering jails last year.