Sri Lanka considers house arrest to ease prison overcrowding

The Government is considering house arrest and other technology-based alternatives to imprisonment as part of wider legal reforms aimed at reducing severe overcrowding in Sri Lanka’s prisons, Justice and National Integration Minister Harshana Nanayakkara said.

Speaking at the opening of the new Pugoda Court Complex on Friday, Nanayakkara said the Government was preparing legal amendments to introduce alternatives to imprisonment in appropriate cases.

He said Sri Lanka’s prisons, which were built to accommodate 10,375 inmates, were currently holding about four times that number.

Delays in obtaining Government Analyst reports remained a major cause of overcrowding because they prolonged the remand periods of suspects, the Minister said.

He added that the remand population could be reduced by nearly half if the authorities issued the reports more quickly.

The Government has increased the capacity of the Government Analyst’s Department to issue between 1,500 and 2,000 reports a month and has provided additional staff and resources to improve its efficiency, Nanayakkara said.

He also identified the growing backlog of court cases as one of the most serious challenges facing Sri Lanka’s justice system and called for pending cases to be reduced to a manageable level.

Developed countries have between 40 and 60 judges per one million people, while Sri Lanka has only about 10 judges per million, he said.