The mess at Welikada Prison- the over crowded

Welikada prison and other prisons across the country. End result? read this!



The new checking of visitors to the prison, the prisoners and the officials who work in the prison comes as a new directive, to curb the increasingly unwarranted/illegal contacts the prisoners seem to have with the outside world.

At meeting held with the minister of justice, Milinda Moragoda, the secretary of defence, Gotabhaya Rajapaksha, inspector general of police, Victor Perera and senior officials, attorney general Mohan Peiris P.C, Commissioner General of police, Maj. Gen. V. R Silva and Government analyst, T.R.N.M. Liyanarchchi the decision was taken to implement this new programme.

“There are 3 aspects to this new process, the visitors to the prison would be checked by the police, the prisoners would be checked by the army, police or the air force on their return from courts and the prison officials themselves would be checked in the presence of others”, said General Silva.

This has been put as a pilot project to protect the public and to take a burden off the prison officials. Although it has been implemented only for a few days the officials have found 20 mobile phones and 47 sims during their search, which would be given to the CID for investigation if needed.

The programme has been implemented in Welikada and Magazine prisons currently. The prisons in the country are currently facing a crisis of over crowding due to many reasons.

“There are prisoners also because they can’t find someone to release them on personal bail and because they can’t pay the bail’, said General Silva. While there is also another small percentage of prisoners who are not released due the delay in the government analysts’ reports.

Government Analysts, T.R.N.M Liyanarchchi says that it is due to a lack of staff. They have however requested the Ministry of Justice and Law reforms to overcome the situation and are assured that the vacancies will soon be filled.

There are currently 31,635 prisoners in the country’s prisons, 15,000 of whom are remand suspects in jail. Many as 60 percent of them have been arrested for drug related offences. Many of the cases are from the Magistrates’ court. When the correct documents and reports are not given on time the suspects would be further remanded until they are received or until the next date the case is to be heard.

Prisons such as Welikada have been built only to accommodate 1,700 prisoners, but today it houses close to 6,000 prisoners.

They are bailed out depending on the progress of the case. “The judicial procedures are lengthy and sometimes the reports from both the government analyst and the police are not provided on time”, said General Silva.
By Nabeela Hussain, Amreen Ameen and Melanie Bamunusinghe