Sri Lanka’s prison system is considering recalling retired officers to fill serious staffing shortages, while the old Bogambara Prison is being prepared once again to accommodate inmates. When prisons require pensioners and previously closed facilities to keep the system functioning, the problem may be considerably larger than recruitment.
Sri Lanka’s overcrowded and overstretched prison system is looking backwards for personnel as it attempts to cope with the pressures confronting it today.
The Department of Prisons is considering bringing retired prison officers back into service to address an existing shortage of personnel, according to Commissioner General of Prisons Prasad Hemantha.
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At the same time, the old Bogambara Prison is being prepared to receive inmates, with refurbishment work reported to be around 90 percent complete and officers now being assigned to the facility.
Taken separately, each measure can be explained as a practical administrative response.
Taken together, they raise a more uncomfortable question about the condition of Sri Lanka’s prison system.
Sri Lankan prisons have struggled for years with overcrowding, inadequate staffing and large numbers of people held on remand. A substantial prison population therefore consists not only of convicted offenders serving sentences but people awaiting the completion of criminal proceedings.
That distinction matters.
Remand exists principally to ensure that an accused person appears before court and, where appropriate, to protect an investigation or the public. It is not supposed to operate as an advance instalment of a sentence that has never been imposed.
Yet when a justice system becomes congested, the consequences eventually arrive at the prison gate.
More prisoners require more accommodation, more officers, more transport, more food, more medical services and more public money. Reopening or repurposing prison capacity deals with the immediate physical problem, but it does not necessarily address why so many people need to be accommodated in the first place.
The proposal to bring retired officers back may prove sensible as an interim measure. Experienced personnel can fill gaps more quickly than newly recruited officers who require training.
But it should remain an interim measure.
A modern correctional system cannot be built indefinitely around retirees being summoned back because the State failed to recruit, train and retain sufficient personnel for the institution it actually operates.
Bogambara may provide additional space. Retired officers may provide additional hands. Neither answers the larger question.
Why is Sri Lanka’s prison system under such pressure that it needs both?
