Read the following passage and answer the given questions based on the information provided in the passage. The latest numbers are out. 9,180 prisoner...

Read the following passage and answer the given questions based on the information provided in the passage. The latest numbers are out. 9,180 prisoners with mental illness, 150 deaths by suicide, five prisoners with schizophrenia and epilepsy have died. While we know the numbers, we do not know what is being considered as a mental illness and whether these numbers are limited to persons who are in the mental health ward, or does it also include those who are living in barracks but still on psychiatric medication. We also do not know when the onset of the illness was and what the different illnesses were or how long they have been in prison for. The National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) Prison Statistics India Report is out for the year 2021. Perhaps it needs repeating, yet again that there is a mental health crisis in prisons. We often hear that the aim of punishment is reform and rehabilitation. Yet when we look at the place where that punishment is served, we find conditions that, instead of promoting rehabilitation, ensure despair, hopelessness and helplessness. In any case, our prisons are not overcrowded with convicts, rather it is the undertrial population that makes up for over 70% of prison population. More than half of those with mental illness were undertrials. However, the numbers could very well be higher. For instance, Project 39A’s report on mental health and the death penalty, Deathworthy, revealed that over 60% of death row prisoners had a current episode of mental illness, but many of them had not been identified by the prison as needing treatment and care. Deathworthy also revealed that suicide had little to do with mental illness and a lot with absent social support, violence, distress, and despair. India’s National Mental Health Policy, 2014, considers prisoners a class of people vulnerable to mental ill-health. But while the NRCB gives us data confirming this categorisation, it does not take us much further towards crafting solutions, and leaves us none the wiser. Why do we have so many prisoners living with mental illness? Were all these prisoners living with a mental illness before incarceration, or did they have their first episode in prison? The system is not equipped to give us such crucial information. Understanding these numbers in a meaningful context is important because without that our default response to this crisis will continue to be that of treatment and, conversations will get stuck at the poor healthcare infrastructure in prison. From the information provided in the passage, what is stated about the prison population?