The Department of Prisons has formally asked the Ministry of Justice to act on delays in issuing Government Analyst reports, which it says are a direct cause of severe overcrowding in Sri Lanka’s jails.
Acting Commissioner General of Prisons Prasad Hemantha said the wait for Government Analyst reports leaves suspects in remand custody for extended periods, swelling the prison population well beyond capacity. Approximately 39,000 inmates are currently being held in prisons across the island, he said.
Hemantha said the department has begun transferring drug-dependent inmates to rehabilitation centres as one measure to relieve pressure on the system.
Government Analyst reports — which include the toxicology and narcotics analyses required in drug prosecutions — must generally be filed before cases can proceed, and a backlog leaves large numbers of unconvicted suspects held on remand rather than serving sentences.
The intervention places the prisons administration behind a diagnosis the Justice Ministry has already made publicly. Justice and National Integration Minister Harshana Nanayakkara said last week that report delays were among the main causes of overcrowding and that faster turnaround could cut the remand population by close to half. He said the Government Analyst’s Department had been given additional staff and resources to lift its output to between 1,500 and 2,000 reports a month.
Nanayakkara has also said the government is drafting legal amendments to allow alternatives to imprisonment, including technology-based measures such as house arrest, noting that facilities built for 10,375 inmates are holding roughly four times that number.
Conditions inside the prison system have been under scrutiny since the Negombo Prison unrest earlier this month, which left dozens dead and prompted renewed calls for structural reform of remand and sentencing practices.
