Justice and National Integration Minister Harshana Nanayakkara says overcrowding in Sri Lanka’s prisons will ease within one to one-and-a-half months, as the Government Analyst’s Department clears the testing backlog that keeps thousands of drug suspects in remand custody.
He made the remarks to reporters on Tuesday after visiting Anuradhapura prison, the Daily Mirror reported.
About 23,000 prisoners held on drug-related charges are in remand because of delays in Government Analyst reports, the minister said. Set against the official prison population of 39,516 recorded on August 1, that figure would account for well over half of everyone held in the system.
The numbers behind the promise
Nanayakkara said the government has recruited 70 officers to the Government Analyst’s Department and procured three analysis machines. Output now runs at 400 to 500 reports a day.
Both measures were promised earlier this month. On August 7 the minister said the department had 118 vacancies, that about 70 staff were being recruited and that new equipment was due within the month, which he expected to lift capacity to between 7,500 and 9,000 reports a month. Tuesday’s figure suggests that target has been met or passed: 400 to 500 reports a day works out to roughly 8,800 to 11,000 a month across a normal working month.
It is also a steep climb from where the department stood in late July, when the same minister put its output at 1,500 to 2,000 reports a month.
Government Analyst reports — the toxicology and narcotics analyses that establish the weight and composition of seized drugs — must generally be filed before a drug prosecution can proceed. Until they arrive, suspects wait on remand rather than serving sentences. The department reported this month that about 70% of the reports it produces relate to drugs.
Prison safety mechanism
Nanayakkara also said the government is establishing a joint mechanism across all prisons to safeguard the rights and safety of inmates and to protect lives and property. He did not describe how it would operate or who would run it.
The bottleneck he described is the same one a parliamentary oversight committee identified last week, when it asked Sri Lanka Police for proposals on reducing overcrowding and singled out delays in both court proceedings and analyst reports.
No other verified newsroom had reported the minister’s Anuradhapura remarks at the time of writing. Daily Mirror did not say what prompted the visit, whether the 23,000 figure covers suspects awaiting reports specifically or all drug-related remand prisoners, or what the prison population stands at now.
