Punjab's prisons hold well above their sanctioned capacity, as do most Indian prisons, and a large majority of the people in them are undertrials rather than convicts.
A substantial share of the prison population is held under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, and a large proportion of those cases involve small quantities.
Punjab's jails have a documented drug supply problem of their own and have been the subject of repeated inquiries into mobile phones, contraband and staff involvement.
The state runs de-addiction facilities inside prisons, which is more than most states do.
Jail is where the drug policy and the criminal justice system meet, and where the difference between treating dependence as an illness and as a crime becomes a matter of where a person sleeps.
Punjab has central jails at Amritsar, Ludhiana, Ferozepur, Patiala, Kapurthala, Gurdaspur, Bathinda and Faridkot, with district jails and sub jails besides. Several were built in the colonial period and are still in use.
Undertrials are the larger part of the population, as they are nationally, and narcotics cases move slowly because they turn on chemical analysis reports from a small number of state laboratories.
Mobile phone recoveries inside Punjab jails run into the thousands each year and the state has installed jammers repeatedly. Extortion and killings organised from inside are a recurring subject in the Punjabi press.