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Justice and public safety in India

India is a federation with a strong centre and a common-law tradition. Its defining feature for this site is a split competence: the criminal codes are national, but police, prosecution and prisons are run by the States — so who runs the police or the prisons depends on which State you are in. The judiciary is integrated under a single Supreme Court, and three new national criminal codes came into force in 2024.

Fact-checkedSafety review clearedLast updated 27 July 2026Last reviewed 27 July 2026

Institutional facts on these pages were checked against their sources on 27 July 2026. Where a cited provision carries a scheduled change, the page states the date.

India is a federation of a Union and States with a common-law tradition and a written, supreme Constitution (in force since 26 January 1950). Legislative power is divided by the Seventh Schedule (Article 246) into a Union List, a State List and a Concurrent List — and the way the four justice functions fall across that division is the key to the whole system.

The judiciary, by contrast, is integrated: a single hierarchy under the Supreme Court of India, with a High Court for each State and the subordinate courts beneath them — not two parallel federal and state court systems. The Union also runs limited federal investigative agencies (the CBI and the NIA) alongside the State police.

Jurisdictions modelled

A territory can exist administratively without being a separate legal jurisdiction. This table records, for each modelled tier and territory, whether it has its own arrangement for a function, whether the function is organised nationally, or whether we have simply not researched it.

Functional scope of each modelled India jurisdiction
Jurisdiction	Level	Courts	Prosecution	Policing
Republic of India	federal	own	shared	shared
Maharashtra	state	shared	own	own
Tamil Nadu	state	shared	own	own
Uttar Pradesh	state	shared	own	own

unknown means not researched. It is never a synonym for none: an unresearched territory does not inherit the metropolitan arrangement.

What has not been researched

These areas have no page. That is a statement about our research, not about India: each of these institutions exists, and we have simply not established enough from primary sources to write about it responsibly.

Forensic systemNot researched: The organisation of forensic science in India (the central and State Forensic Science Laboratories, and the new criminal codes' forensic-visit requirements) has not been read to the standard required, and forensics is a safety-sensitive section where an under-sourced description is specifically forbidden.
Border and customsNot researched: Border and customs in India involve the Central Armed Police Forces (the Border Security Force and others), the immigration bureau and the customs administration, and could not be researched to the standard required here without risking an inaccurate description of a security-sensitive function.
Institutional historyNot researched: India's institutional history — the 1950 Constitution, the reception and reform of the colonial criminal codes, and the 2024 replacement of the Indian Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Evidence Act — cannot be written responsibly from general knowledge and requires scholarly and archival sources not consulted here.
Institutional timelineNot researched: A timeline requires each milestone to carry its own verified source and date. The dated facts established in this pilot — the 1950 Constitution and the 2024 commencement of the BNS/BNSS/BSA — are a start, but a responsible timeline needs primary sources for each milestone, which were not assembled here.

Uncertainty

What we could not establish

The State layer is modelled with three illustrative States (Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh); their specific institutional detail is not researched, and the Union Territories — where some justice functions are Union-administered — are noted but not modelled.
The federal investigative agencies (the CBI under the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act 1946; the NIA under the NIA Act 2008), the Directorate of Prosecution provision (BNSS s. 20), the police-investigation provisions (BNSS s. 175), the National Legal Services Authority, and the State Police Complaints Authorities (mandated by Prakash Singh v. Union of India, 2006) are described from secondary/reputable sources, not primary-fetched statutes; the Constitution and the Press Information Bureau release are primary.
The forensic system, border and customs arrangements, and institutional history have not been researched and are not described.

Sources

The Constitution of India (as on 1 May 2024)
Government of India, Ministry of Law and Justice (Legislative Department) · Legislation · 1950-01-26 · link verified 2026-07-27
The official Constitution of India PDF (Ministry of Law and Justice, "As on 1st May, 2024"), fetched and text-extracted; the Seventh Schedule entries and the cited articles were re-confirmed verbatim in two independent passes. Supports the federal division of legislative power under the Seventh Schedule (Article 246): List II (State List) Entry 1 "Public order", Entry 2 "Police (including railway and village police)", Entry 4 "Prisons, reformatories, Borstal institutions… and persons detained therein" — so police, public order and prisons are exclusive STATE subjects; List III (Concurrent List) Entry 1 "Criminal law…", Entry 2 "Criminal procedure…", Entry 11A "Administration of Justice; constitution and organisation of all courts, except the Supreme Court and the High Courts" — so the criminal codes and subordinate-court organisation are concurrent (national); and List I (Union List) Entry 8 "Central Bureau of Intelligence and Investigation". Also supports Article 50 (separation of the judiciary from the executive), Article 124 (the Supreme Court of India), Article 141 (Supreme Court law binding on all courts), Article 214 ("There shall be a High Court for each State"), and Article 235 (High Court control over district and subordinate courts).
World Prison Brief — India
Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR), Birkbeck, University of London · Academic · link verified 2026-07-27
The World Prison Brief country page for India (compiled by ICPR from the National Crime Records Bureau's Prison Statistics India), read directly and re-confirmed by hand. Supports: prison administration by "Governments of States and Union Territories" (corroborating that prisons are a State function); a total prison population of 511,542 including pre-trial detainees at 31 December 2024 (source: the National Crime Records Bureau); a rate of 36 per 100,000; an official capacity of 453,769 at the same date; and an occupancy level of 112.7% at 31 December 2024 — above capacity.