Photo Feature: Art Drawn Inside The Carceral State, By Arun Ferreira

Drawn from inside prison walls, Arun Ferreira’s artworks document incarceration not as an abstract idea but as a lived, grinding reality. A Mumbai-based lawyer, activist and trained cartoonist, Ferreira has long been involved in social and political movements, beginning with his student years at St. Xavier’s College.

His drawings—published over the years in mainstream outlets as well as student and labour magazines—use stark lines and sparse text to interrogate the criminal justice system, prison violence, judicial thinking, and the psychological toll of confinement. From the dehumanisation captured in Honourable Acquittal to the crushing solitude of Cell Alone, and from routine brutality to overcrowded, volatile prisons, these works expose how punishment is normalised, how incarceration is mistaken for reform, and how the human cost of imprisonment is routinely erased.

Honourable Acquittal art: The paradox of our Criminal Justice System that reduces a human to mere animal existence.

Court & Jail Art: Judiciary's approach in dealing with social crimes. It creates an illusion that keeping people in prison will solve crime.

Cell Alone: I, me and myself. If only sleep would silently ship me to some sociable shore.

Prison Violence Art: Curses, Kicks, blows and prison discipline is enforced.

Prison Reforms: With bursting barracks and scant bails, our prisons are proverbial powder kegs.

A Mumbai-based lawyer, activist and trained cartoonist, Arun Ferreira has long been involved in social and political movements, beginning with his student years at St. Xavier’s College