The inhumanity of Pakistan’s justice system is laid bare through the silent suffering of children living behind bars—not because they have broken any law, but because their mothers have nowhere else to go. A recent report by Islam Khabar has revealed that at least 140 children under the age of six are growing up inside prisons across Punjab, forced into confinement by circumstance rather than crime.
These children—67 boys and 73 girls housed in 45 facilities—spend their earliest years surrounded by steel bars, overcrowded cells, and the constant sound of clanging iron doors. The largest numbers are found in Adiala Jail and Multan Women’s Jail, both of which have become grim nurseries for childhoods that should have blossomed in freedom.
Though the law allows children to stay with incarcerated mothers until the age of five to preserve maternal bonds, the provision translates into a cruel reality. Their presence is legal, but their childhood is not protected. When these children reach the age limit, they are separated and sent to relatives or SOS Villages—a second forced rupture that compounds years of emotional deprivation.
Inside these prisons, life is defined by scarcity.
Meals often consist of lentils and flatbread, insufficient for growing children. Milk and fruit are luxuries. Education, where it exists, is inconsistent and conducted in cramped rooms. Most prisons lack pediatric care, proper ventilation, or sanitary conditions, leaving children exposed to illness and developmental delays.
These are spaces built for punishment—not protection—and yet they have become nurseries.
Officials cite “legal obligations” to justify the situation, exposing a justice system more invested in compliance than conscience. The children growing up behind bars are among the most powerless victims of structural indifference: innocent lives shaped by confinement, deprivation, and emotional neglect from the moment they enter the world.
A prison cell was never meant to be a cradle. But for more than a hundred children across Pakistan, it is the only world they know—a childhood stolen long before it had the chance to begin.
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