Prison System of Bhutan

The prison system of Bhutan is the network of custodial facilities operated by the Royal Bhutan Police under the authority of the Ministry of Home and Cultural Affairs. It is governed principally by the Prison Act of Bhutan 2009, the Royal Bhutan Police Act 2009, the Civil and Criminal Procedure Code of Bhutan 2001 and the Penal Code of Bhutan 2004. According to the Royal Bhutan Police Statistical Yearbook 2024, Bhutan operates seven prison establishments: six for adults and one for minors. The total prison population stood at roughly 853 in mid-2025, with the central prison at Chemgang near Thimphu holding about 653 inmates against a rated capacity of around 435.^[1]^[2]

The system draws sharply differing assessments. The Royal Government of Bhutan presents its prisons as operating within the constitutional and statutory guarantees set out in Article 7 of the Constitution of Bhutan and in the 2009 Prison Act. Independent monitors, led by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention after its January 2019 country visit and a successor stream of reporting by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have praised procedural improvements while documenting serious gaps in pretrial detention arrangements, medical access, independent monitoring and the treatment of long-serving political prisoners.^[3]^[4]

Legal framework

The constitutional foundation is Article 7 of the 2008 Constitution, which guarantees the rights to liberty, a fair trial, protection against torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and access to legal counsel. Article 7(16) prohibits retroactive penal laws. These provisions are elaborated by four operational statutes.

The Prison Act of Bhutan 2009 is the primary prison-governance statute. It empowers the Chief of Police, in consultation with the Minister of Home Affairs, to designate any building or enclosure as a prison or reformative training centre, and it places the running of prisons under the Prison Services Division of the Royal Bhutan Police. A shorter Prison Act 1982 drafted for the pre-democracy administration remained in force until the 2009 statute superseded it. The Royal Bhutan Police Act 2009 sets out the broader authority of the RBP, including arrest, custody and interrogation procedures. The Civil and Criminal Procedure Code 2001 governs arrest, remand, bail, trial and appeal. The Penal Code 2004 (as amended in 2011 and 2021) sets the substantive offences and sentencing tariffs that determine who is sent to prison and for how long. For minors, the Child Care and Protection Act 2011 introduced a separate juvenile justice stream, including provision for remand homes, special homes and after-care homes, and a requirement that juveniles be held apart from adults.^[5]^[6]

There is no separate prison service outside the police; custody is therefore a police function rather than a civilian corrections function, an arrangement which the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention flagged in 2019 as a structural weakness requiring, in its view, the eventual creation of dedicated pretrial detention facilities and a corrections workforce distinct from operational policing.^[7]

Governance and custody chain

Operational responsibility sits with the Prison Services Division of the Royal Bhutan Police, which in turn reports to the Ministry of Home and Cultural Affairs. A Bureau of Law and Order within the Ministry is the policy-level home for law-enforcement affairs. The chain of custody typically runs from arrest by an RBP patrol, to short-term detention in a police station lockup, to transfer to a dzongkhag-level holding facility if the case is not resolved quickly, and ultimately to one of the central prisons for sentenced offenders. Dzongkhag courts and the Dungkhag Courts are the principal sentencing tribunals, with appeals to the High Court and, at final instance, the Supreme Court.

Because Bhutan has no dedicated pretrial detention infrastructure for adults, people on remand are held in the same police station lockups used for short-term custody. The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention noted in 2019 that the time spent in police-station remand was not counted towards the remission of sentences, a gap which advocacy groups have continued to cite.^[3]

Facility inventory

Public sources describe a small, concentrated network. The facilities most consistently identified in RBP, US State Department, UN and NGO reporting are set out below.

Chemgang Central Jail (also spelt Chamgang) — the principal long-term prison, located in the hills south-west of Thimphu. It houses the largest share of the sentenced population, including the "anti-national" wing in which most of Bhutan's long-serving political prisoners are held.^[8]
Rabuna Prison — a smaller facility in eastern Bhutan associated with prisoners drawn from former Royal Bhutan Army personnel in the Nepali-speaking community. Human Rights Watch reported in January 2026 that seven political prisoners were held at Rabuna at that time.^[9]
Nganglam Prison — a regional facility in Pemagatshel dzongkhag referenced in older human-rights reporting. Its current population and function are not quantified in publicly available sources.
Open-air prisons — a distinctive Bhutanese model for lower-risk detainees, covered in detail in the open-air prisons of Bhutan article.
Dzongkhag-level detention — short- and medium-term custody at the headquarters of the twenty dzongkhags, typically co-located with RBP district offices.
Police station lockups — the network of RBP station cells used for arrest, overnight custody and adult remand.
Minors' facility — the single juvenile establishment identified in the 2024 RBP Statistical Yearbook, which operates under the Child Care and Protection Act 2011 framework.

Population and categories

The most recent official figure comes from the RBP Statistical Yearbook 2024, which together with follow-up Kuensel reporting on the 2024–25 crime data put the total prison population at roughly 853 in mid-2025. The yearbook noted that while the overall volume of crime was falling, the severity of offences coming through the system was rising, contributing to longer sentences and persistent occupancy pressure at Chemgang.^[10]

Prisoners are broadly grouped into four categories in publicly available reporting:

Ordinary criminal prisoners, the large majority, serving sentences for drug offences, larceny, assault and other Penal Code felonies.
Pretrial and remand detainees, held in police station lockups pending trial.
Security-related or political prisoners, estimated at around 30 by Human Rights Watch in January 2026, held principally at Chemgang with a cohort of seven at Rabuna. A standing roster of names is maintained by the Global Campaign for the Release of Political Prisoners in Bhutan and is summarised in the list of Bhutanese political prisoners.^[9]
Juveniles, held in the single dedicated minors' facility under the Child Care and Protection Act.

Conditions

Conditions in Bhutanese prisons have been described in three distinct registers: official statements by the Royal Bhutan Police and the Ministry of Home and Cultural Affairs; independent findings of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention after its 2019 visit; and testimony from released long-term prisoners reported by Human Rights Watch in 2023 and 2024. The three registers do not always agree, and readers should weigh them as distinct bodies of evidence rather than a single consensus account.

Official sources describe a regime broadly compliant with the Prison Act 2009 and Article 7 of the Constitution, with medical services, food rations, work programmes and religious access provided according to statutory standards.

The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which in January 2019 travelled to Thimphu, Paro, Chhukha, Phuentsholing, Samtse and Punakha, visited more than twenty places of detention and interviewed more than 150 people deprived of their liberty, praised several aspects of the system. It noted the practice of presenting arrested individuals before a judge within 24 hours, the general counting of time spent in custody towards sentences at the sentencing stage, and expeditious trial timelines. At the same time it identified "important challenges", including the existence of non-bailable offences, the absence of dedicated pretrial detention facilities for adults, the detention of juveniles in police stations, insufficient attention to the needs of female detainees, weaknesses in the guarantee of legal representation, a low level of legal literacy among detainees, and deprivation of liberty in civil debt matters. It also observed that "there is still a significant number of historical cases" of prisoners serving life sentences with no prospect of parole, noting that Bhutanese law provides no parole mechanism for life sentences outside the royal amnesty power.^[3]

Testimony from released long-term prisoners, reported by Human Rights Watch in September 2023 following the release of Madhukar Monger and in July 2024 following the release of Ram Bahadur Rai, has described a harsher regime than either the official or the WGAD account. According to that testimony, food rations at Chemgang were halved after the International Committee of the Red Cross ceased its monitoring visits in 2012, with monthly rice allocations reportedly cut from 20 kg to 12 kg per prisoner, wheat flour from 6 kg to 1.5 kg, and lentils from 3 kg to 2 kg. The same testimony described prisoners selling portions of their rations to guards to buy medicine and clothing, waiting up to eight months to be seen by a doctor and being required to pay for paracetamol. The Royal Government has not publicly responded to these specific numerical claims, and they are sourced to a small number of released-prisoner witnesses rather than an independent survey of the prison population.^[11]^[8]

Independent monitoring

External monitoring of Bhutanese prisons is thin. The International Committee of the Red Cross conducted periodic visits to Chemgang and reportedly other facilities until 2012, when its access ceased. Neither the RGoB nor the ICRC has publicly set out the reasons for the cessation. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention visited the country in January 2019 and published its formal report as A/HRC/42/39/Add.1 later that year — the most recent systematic independent assessment of Bhutanese detention facilities. Separately, six UN Special Rapporteurs issued a joint communication in April 2025 raising concerns about the detention conditions, medical access and family contact of long-serving political prisoners, and in 2024 the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention adopted Opinion No. 60/2024 finding the continued detention of named Bhutanese political prisoners to be arbitrary on four independent grounds.^[7]^[4]

Bhutan has also engaged with the Universal Periodic Review of the UN Human Rights Council in the 2009, 2014, 2019 and 2024 cycles. Recommendations on prison conditions, pretrial detention, juvenile justice and the release of long-term political prisoners have been made repeatedly by peer states and by civil-society submissions to the UPR.

The annual US State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices contain a standing section on prison and detention conditions in Bhutan. Recent editions have repeated NGO allegations of poor medical provision at Chemgang, the lack of ICRC access since 2012, and the continued detention of a cohort of long-serving prisoners from the 1990–94 period.

Deaths in custody

Deaths in custody are not systematically catalogued in publicly accessible Bhutanese sources. The most fully documented recent case is that of Sha Bahadur Gurung, who died at Chemgang Central Jail on 15 December 2025 after approximately 35 years of detention, first at Rabuna and then at Chemgang. Human Rights Watch, relaying the authorities' account, reported that his death was attributed to complications arising from a long-standing eye condition. Amnesty International Nepal, relaying the account of family members in the refugee-origin community, described his death as the culmination of decades of abuse, medical neglect and delayed response. No independent post-mortem has been released publicly. The two accounts should be treated as contested and are discussed in fuller form in the standalone article.^[9]

In their April 2025 joint communication, six UN Special Rapporteurs referred to "two detainees" who had died in detention before that date. Whether these were political prisoners, and whether they overlap with any names on the current advocacy rosters, is not publicly established. Earlier deaths in custody are not systematically documented in publicly accessible sources reviewed for this article; the most likely repositories of such information are Tek Nath Rizal's memoir Torture Killing Me Softly and archival materials held by AHURA Bhutan and other exile organisations.

Political prisoners

Bhutan's long-serving political prisoners — convicted under the National Security Act 1992, the treason provisions of the pre-2004 penal framework and the Penal Code 2004 terrorism articles — are the single most-discussed feature of the prison system in external reporting. Most are drawn from the Lhotshampa (Nepali-speaking) community and were arrested during the 1990 demonstrations and the 1990–94 security operations in southern Bhutan, or, in a smaller second cohort, during the 2008 Bhutan Communist Party (Marxist–Leninist–Maoist) arrests. The Royal Government has historically described their offences as "treasonable acts", "acts against the Tsa-Wa-Sum" or "anti-national activities"; advocacy organisations have described them as peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators or distributors of political pamphlets. The divergence is explored in the dedicated list of Bhutanese political prisoners, in WGAD Opinion 60/2024 and in the National Security Act article.^[12]

Historical context

Before the modern prison system took shape, custody in Bhutan was administered through the dzongs, which contained detention cells used under the authority of the dzongpons and later the penlops, and through monastic discipline administered at the gompa level. The Royal Bhutan Police was established in 1965, and a recognisable civilian criminal-justice infrastructure developed alongside the modernisation reforms of the Third and Fourth Kings. The 1982 Prison Act gave the first statutory basis for a central prison regime. The 1990–94 period drove a sharp expansion of the custodial population as large numbers of Lhotshampa arrested under the NSA 1992 were processed through the courts and into Chemgang; the 2008 BCP arrests added a second, smaller tranche. The 2008 democratic transition, the 2008 Constitution and the subsequent raft of 2009 police and prison legislation placed the system on its current statutory footing.

Reform debate

Three reform currents run through public discussion of the Bhutanese prison system. The first is the government's own modernisation programme, emphasising training of correctional staff, upgrades to physical infrastructure, the rollout of the juvenile justice framework under the Child Care and Protection Act and the expansion of open-air detention for lower-risk prisoners. The second is the set of procedural recommendations made by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in its 2019 report, including the creation of dedicated pretrial detention facilities separated from police station lockups, a review of non-bailable offences, strengthened legal representation, a review of the juvenile justice framework for conformity with international standards and the introduction of a parole mechanism for life sentences. The third is the release-and-review current pressed by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Global Campaign for the Release of Political Prisoners in Bhutan and exile organisations, focused on the release of the long-serving political-prisoner cohort, the reinstatement of ICRC access and the publication of prison statistics disaggregated by offence category and length of sentence.^[4]

Coverage of prison conditions in Bhutan-based media is sparse. As of the time of writing, neither Kuensel nor BBS has published substantive coverage of WGAD Opinion 60/2024, the April 2025 joint communication of the six UN Special Rapporteurs or the death of Sha Bahadur Gurung in December 2025. Most documentation of these events exists in external reporting — HRW, Amnesty International, OHCHR press releases, Nepali Times, Kathmandu Post and exile publications — a pattern consistent with the broader state of freedom of expression in Bhutan as scored by Reporters Without Borders and Freedom House.