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 The need for effective and humane prison reforms

11 Nov 2022

For a country that proudly displays, in front of one of its main prisons, a slogan that reads “prisoners are human beings too”, how much Sri Lanka has achieved when it comes to making prisons a liveable place for inmates remains in question. In fact, providing solutions to some issues in the prison system that have persisted for over a decade are still on the authorities’ to-do list. The lack of capacity, or unmanageable congestion, within prisons is one such issue, regarding which Minister of Justice, Prisons Affairs, and Constitutional Reforms President’s Counsel Dr. Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, recently announced several plans in Parliament. As a potential solution to the lack of capacity in prisons, he said that plans are afoot to limit the number of days a prisoner can be visited by outsiders to one per week, and to increase the number of visitors to three, and also to release extremely elderly or sick prisoners based on the recommendations of an expert committee tasked with evaluating their health situation. This is in a context where the country’s prison system currently houses about 25,000 inmates – despite its capacity being limited to merely 13,000 inmates. While the Minister’s proposals have the potential to reduce congestion in prisons to a limited extent and it is admirable that he is taking some measures to address it, those do not look like considerably effective or sustainable measures that could help the prison system. When the said plans were announced, the Minister stated that although visitors are allowed to see prisoners’ five days a week, not too many inmates get visitors on all five days and that some inmates do not get visitors even once a month. If the number of visitors is that low, how can reducing visiting days help reduce congestion in prisons to a considerable extent? The Minister seems to have forgotten the important fact that the issue is not the lack of space for visitors, but for the inmates themselves. Even if the number of visitors or visitations was reduced to zero, this is not going to have any effect on the size of prison cells. Moreover, we cannot expect that such a drastic limitation will not adversely affect the inmates’ mental health. The second proposal, however, seems to have more practical benefits. Keeping extremely old or sick people in prisons not only makes the latter stage of their lives unpleasant, but also increases the cost of maintaining and treating them in prisons. However, within a prison system that accommodates twice the number of people it is built for, it is highly questionable how helpful such a measure could be in reducing congestion. This plan could be improved by not sticking to merely the old and the sick, but by also including minor offenders in the list of eligible groups. Perhaps it is time for Sri Lanka to introduce a more relaxed punishment system for those that have committed certain minor offences that can be pardoned on humanitarian grounds. At present, Sri Lanka’s prison system has a large number of people who have committed such minor offences due to reasons such as hunger, poor judgement, or ignorance of the law, as well as those who went to prison due to their inability to pay fines. A warning and/or a pardoning system to release such persons with restrictions or warnings without a fine, which is decided on a case-by-case basis on a judge’s discretion, would considerably reduce congestion within prisons. The abysmal conditions of most prisons in Sri Lanka are no secret. There have been plenty of discussions or plans on improving the quality of these prisons in order to provide inmates with better living conditions, although many of these optimistic plans have barely entered the implementation phase. In this context, although the Minister’s intentions and objectives appear to be a step in the right direction, their effectiveness should be reconsidered if they are to effect any lasting change.


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