Justice and National Integration Minister Harshana Nanayakkara said the wave of disturbances in Sri Lanka’s prisons reflects resistance to the government’s campaign against drug trafficking and organised crime, and announced a change to the bail law intended to shorten remand periods.
He made the remarks in a special statement at the Justice Ministry on Friday afternoon, addressing the incidents reported at several prisons since Thursday night.
Nanayakkara said the pattern emerging from the incidents suggests a backlash against operations targeting narcotics networks and underworld activity both inside and outside prisons. Deploying Special Task Force and military personnel where needed had prevented larger loss of life, he said, and the government now works through a structured response mechanism.
Bail to be moved back to the High Court
The minister said suspects arrested over drug offences where the net weight exceeds 10 grams must currently apply to the Court of Appeal for bail — a route he identified as a main cause of long remand periods. An amendment allowing those applications to be made to the High Court instead will be put to Cabinet.
He also pointed to delays in Government Analyst’s Department reports, which had left some inmates in remand for close to a year. The department had 118 vacancies; about 70 staff are being recruited and new equipment is due this month, which he said should lift capacity to between 7,500 and 9,000 reports a month.
The numbers behind the overcrowding
Nanayakkara rejected suggestions that the prison system has broken down, while acknowledging long-standing structural problems. He said roughly 29,000 inmates were held in facilities built for 10,000 to 11,000 when the administration took office, and that the figure has since risen to about 40,000 following the narcotics crackdown.
Of those, he said, only around 10,000 are convicted prisoners; some 30,000 are on remand, roughly 23,000 of them on drug-related charges. Overcrowding alone could not explain the unrest, he argued, or such incidents would have occurred continuously over the past decade — though he accepted it has made conditions harder and sanitation inadequate.
He urged inmates not to be used by others. “Your issues will be resolved. Do not allow yourselves to be used for the interests of a few individuals,” he said, warning that inmates themselves would bear the cost of any destruction of prison facilities.
Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala told Parliament the same day that intelligence suggests the disturbances may be organised and coordinated.
Sources: NewsFirst, Daily Mirror, Ada Derana, Hiru News.
