An Extraordinary Gazette notification has been issued to re-establish the old Tangalle Prison as a prison facility.
The notification was issued by the Minister of Justice and National Integration, Harshana Nanayakkara.
The gazette comes as the prison system remains under acute pressure. Sri Lanka’s prisons hold populations well in excess of their designed capacity, and overcrowding has been repeatedly cited by officials as a factor behind the unrest that broke out across several facilities in recent weeks.
Bringing a decommissioned facility back into service adds capacity without the lead time required to build a new prison, and follows a pattern of gazette action by the Justice Ministry on prison infrastructure this year.
Successive discussions at Cabinet and parliamentary committee level have focused on reducing the prison population itself — including through expanded rehabilitation for drug-dependent inmates, who make up a substantial share of those held — alongside measures to increase the space available.
No timeline for the Tangalle facility becoming operational was given in the notification.
