MONETABRIEF – Sri Lanka is holding 29,000 prisoners in a system built for 9,000 Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara said after at least 26 jailors and inmates were killed in the worst prison riots in the island nation's history.
Sri Lanka was also short of jailors, to handle the large prison population, Minister Nanayakkkara said.
A Fight broke out in Sri Lanka's Negombo prison at around 1100 am on July 05, ostensibly with some prisoners attacking others who had provided information to authorities on drugs being dealt inside the building.
Drug Dealing Inside Prisons
In the altercation two inmates died and 35 were injured. Prison official intervened and stopped the fight. The next morning on July 06, at breakfast time, another fight had broken out between the two groups.
"The inmates who were assaulted were those who had given information to authorities on drug dealing inside the prison," Minister Nanayakkara told parliament.
Prisoner had also got hold of guns. Whether they were taken from the officers who went in was not yet known and will be determined later, he said.
"So I think it could be linked to underword gangs involved in drugs. This will be determined in the subsequently inquired. The CCTV and a body scanner were destroyed."
"It appears that there was an attempt to stop drugs coming to office."
Identified 734 inmates were transferred to other prisons, he said.
Overcrowding Due to Forensic Report Delays
Sri Lanka's prisons had space for about 10,000 but between 27,000 to 29,000 inmates, he said.
A key reason for overcrowding was an amendment brough to an anti-narcotics law which required the net weight of a drug seized to be determined by the forensic officers.
Due to a shortage of forensic investigators the reports got delayed, leading to overcrowding.
There were 118 vacancies in the Government Analysts Department. From December we started recruitment and hired 72. There are another 10 we have been able to hire.
"There are not many applications and they also lack qualifications," he said. "As a result forensic reports were delayed for about a year. As result of the 2022 amendment, if seized drugs were more than 2grams by net weight, a High Court could give bail. If it was more than 10 grams net it had to be by the Court of Appeal.
"The man in Jaffna and the man in Badulla had to come to Colombo and the man in Galle had to come to Colombo."
"Until the forensic report came prosecutors could not decide on which court to file proceedings, as the net weight was not available from the forensic report. So it took one year to find the net weigh and another six month for proceedings to be filed in court.
"So a man had to be in court for 18 months before finding out whether what he had in his possession was Panadol powder or narcotics."
"We have drafted a law allowing cases involving gross weight of over 100 grams to be filed in Cout of Appeal and below 100 grams to be filed in High Court," Minister Nanayakara said. "Then that can be filed immediately and a year will be saved."
"It will come to parliament in a month or six weeks."
House Arrest and Hiring More Jailors
"We also started constructing more spaces for about 10,000 inmates," Minister Nanayakkara said.
"We also bringing a law to keep a person under house arrest and do electronic monitoring,"
There was also a severe shortage of jailors.
"We have hired 401 and 223 in the process of being hired. Approval has been obtained for 924 positions. That is about a 1000. It takes time to hire.
"There is another problem. State service is no longer attractive. Even for judges we tried to hire 50 but there were only 32 with suitable qualifications."
Even if we hire, it takes years to get the experience to solve crises. There are requests to extend the retirement of prison officers. The same problem with Government Analysts. The same problem exists at legal draftsman office.
"So we have to hire retirees on contract. In some government department this shortage exists. We will have to take a policy decision after some study to extend the retirement age of some departments. (Colombo/July08/2026)