Sri Lanka Prison Riot Exposes Intertwined Crises of Drugs, Crime and Overcrowding

On July 5-6, Sri Lanka witnessed a prison riot at Negombo, north of the capital, Colombo. The riot left 20 prisoners and eight prison officials dead. Over 100 were injured, and security equipment, including CCTV and body scanners, worth tens of millions of Sri Lankan rupees, were destroyed by prisoners. Thousands of prisoners have been transferred to other correctional institutions.

The violence began on July 5 when a group of inmates associated with the leader of an organized criminal gang assaulted and killed two people suspected of providing information about drug dealing inside the jail to prison officers. Things seemed to have settled down by Sunday night, but violence erupted again on Monday. For the first time in Sri Lankan history, jailors were assaulted and killed.

Sri Lankan prisons are overcrowded, and organized criminal gangs operated from inside these institutions without much resistance until recently. Changes in drug-related legislation in 2022 have increased congestion. Austerity measures over the years have weakened prison management. There are over 40,000 inmates in Sri Lanka’s 26 prisons; they were intended to house just 10,000. On paper, Sri Lanka does not mix remand prisoners awaiting trial and convicted prisoners after trial. But the overcrowded prison population makes it difficult to enforce this standard when inmates are not in their cells. There were around 2,600 inmates at Negombo, which was designed to house 650. Apparently, around 700 prisoners were involved in the unrest. The only surprise is why such riots are not more frequent in these overcrowded and under-supervised institutions.

In addition, successive governments have also orchestrated unrest in prisons to divert public attention and to silence people who know too much.

Ever since the J.R. Jayawardene administration in the late 1970s, mainstream political parties have worked closely with organized criminal gangs. These acted as muscle to terrorize political opposition, organize votes in areas where the poor lived and for overall general campaigning, given that no mainstream political party, apart from the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, have any dedicated cadres. These groups also operate inside prisons and frequently work with prison officers to run their criminal operations inside.

Political parties in power have sometimes worked with these groups to incite violence in prisons. In 1983, the United National Party (UNP) allowed racist thugs to attack and kill 53 Tamil inmates in Welikada in a bid to divert public attention from its disastrous policies, to postpone elections that would have cost its supermajority and to proscribe several leftist parties, including the JVP that led the resistance against the UNP’s rule of violence and impunity.

In 2012, a number of prisoners were targeted and killed at the same prison, allegedly by powerful politicians who had previously used these criminals to do their bidding.

Given the above factors, preventing similar unrest in the future requires a multi-pronged approach.

The National People’s Power (NPP) government will have to dismantle drug trafficking networks, contain criminal activity and carry out prison reforms. The importance of all three is well known, but previous governments lacked the political will to act against those who had links with and benefited from the existence of these networks.

One silver lining is that Sri Lanka now has a government without links to organized crime.

Since it was elected in 2024, there have been attempts to reduce criminal activity inside prisons. Scanners have been introduced to prevent drugs and other prohibited equipment from coming in, and CCTV has been installed to supervise the activity of prisoners and officers.

Action has been taken against over a 1,000 errant police officers. The nexus between politicians and organized crime has been exposed, and the amount of drugs seized has increased to unprecedented levels. Steps are being taken to reduce prison congestion by introducing legal reforms like amending the Poisons, Opium and Dangerous Drugs (Amendment) Act, No. 41 of 2022, and filling vacancies in the correctional and justice systems.

Research on prison disturbances has repeatedly identified several common factors, i.e., overcrowding, weak supervision, poor separation of inmates, and limited contact between prisoners and administrators.

This does not reduce the responsibility of those who organized the attacks. The targeting of informants and destruction of scanners and surveillance equipment suggest that criminal groups saw recent security measures as a threat to their operations. The government must identify and punish those who directed the violence, including anyone who assisted them from outside the prison or within the correctional system.

International experience shows that stable prisons need communication channels that inmates can use to report grievances and security threats without exposing themselves to retaliation.

Following the Strangeways prison riot in Britain, the official inquiry recommended limits on prison numbers, smaller and more manageable units, fairer disciplinary procedures and independent oversight of complaints. Subsequent research found that credible complaints systems can ease frustration that had built up over time to prevent violence. Sri Lanka needs similar mechanisms, especially to protect prisoners who provide information about drugs and corrupt officials.

Prisons can intensify the problems they are expected to solve, and drug dependence, psychological distress and crowd behavior can make unrest more destructive.

During Sri Lankan prison riots, inmates usually break into the prison pharmacy and access narcotics and prescription medicines, which leads to mass intoxication and death. Prevention therefore requires mental health care, trained staff, secure medical facilities and rehabilitation programs designed around the realities inmates will face after release.

The Negombo prison riots have sent a warning to the NPP government that its campaign against organized crime may have disrupted arrangements that previous administrations tolerated. But enforcement of the law alone will not dismantle the system that sustains the drug trade.

The government must reduce unnecessary remand detention, modernize rehabilitation, protect informants and confront the social demand that keeps drugs profitable. Otherwise, it will continue sending thousands of people into institutions where criminal networks can recruit and control them.