RIGHTS-SRI LANKA: Breaking Jail Walls for Petty Offenders

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, May 5 2000 (IPS) - Madduma Champika has seen the inside of a prison on many occasions. A habitual drug peddler and user, the 33-year-old homeless woman has often been nabbed by the police.

But caught again recently, she was in for a pleasant surprise. Jail authorities offered her the chance for community work at day and the freedom to go home every night instead of prison, under a new corrective punishment scheme.

“This is a relief. I am serving my time for selling drugs but I am still free,” she says while sweeping the compound of the Gangodawila Women’s detention centre, near Colombo. She lives at the centre as she does not have a home in the city.

“I want to finish my community service period and go abroad to work as a maid in the Middle East,” she says.

Champika is among the several minor offenders who are opting for the community service-in-place-of-jail scheme, introduced a few months ago to reduce pressure on overcrowded Sri Lankan jails. Drug peddling is a minor offence in Sri Lanka, carrying a maximum jail term of two years.

Minor offenders make up a large chunk of the Sri Lankan jail population. Many are in because they are too poor to pay fines of as little as 100 rupees (one and a half U.S. dollars) for minor offences. The sprawling Welikada jail in Colombo is packed to more than four times its capacity with more than 4,000 inmates.

“It costs the government 150 to 200 rupees (less than three dollars) on meals alone per day for each prisoner and more than 50 percent prisoners are small offenders who couldn’t pay a fine on conviction and were jailed,” Commissioner of Community Based Corrections Suhada Gamlath told IPS.

Most small offenders now opt for community service. Official figures show that 216 minor convicts had chosen community service since February 17, when the scheme came into force, till March 24. They are doing menial jobs in government offices, courthouses and universities.

Twenty seven-year-old Chaminda Prashanthi, works in a state-run flower nursery — an assignment he preferred to spending six months in jail after his conviction for drug peddling. Vocational training programmes and a compost-making plant to provide jobs to such convicts are also being planned.

The scheme covers offences like small thefts, drug and illicit liquor sales, keeping stolen goods, prostitution and vagrancy where the maximum jail term is two years.

Under the scheme, a convict jailed for two years can choose 200 to 300 hours of community service to be completed within a year. At the lower end, a convict unable to pay a fine of less than 3,000 rupees (about 40 dollars) must complete between 50 to 75 hours of community service within three months.

Champika, who was jailed for 15 months but volunteered to do community service, plans to work eight hours a day at a stretch and complete her assignment in 19 days.

“Many minor convicts are opting for this because while serving time for an offence, they are able to be with their families and resume their normal jobs. We want to rehabilitate these people and make them better citizens,” says Gamlath.

According to Justice Minister Gamini Lakshman Peiris, the new project is an “alternate sentencing mechanism.” Peiris told the ‘Daily News’ newspaper that it “appropriately penalises offenders by requiring them to perform unpaid community service in lieu of a fine or jail and is entirely voluntary.”

The project is inspired by a similar scheme in Australia and has been started as a pilot scheme at seven magistrates’ courts in the capital city. It will eventually be adopted across the country.

The Australian government agency AusAid is funding the scheme and has sent Robert Carter, director of community corrections in Perth, as a consultant. Australian magistrate Peter Toboven too was in Colombo to meet local magistrates and lawyers to discuss the working of the scheme.

Community corrections officers, trained in Australia, interview the convicts and study their family and educational background, behaviour, and criminal tendencies.

“The analysis also recommends what type of work this individual most suited for,” says Gamlath. The officers, assigned to the courts, prepare a “sociological analysis” report for the court.

Officers also make home visits after convicts begin their assignments to talk to family members and provide counseling services. “We want to change the mindset of these convicts and make them feel wanted by society,” he adds.

At the community corrections office in Colombo, a group of young offenders are being briefed by a corrections officer before being given ‘assignments.’

“We feel you would fall into further trouble by going to jail. So we want to help you,” Commissioner Gamlath tells Thushara Ratnayake, who awaits his turn to be assigned a community service location.

Twenty four-old Ratnayake went to a government school in Colombo, but got addicted to drugs after his mother went to the Middle East to work as a maid. “I realise what I did was wrong and I want to make amends,” he says.

The idea of community service as an option to jail originated in England in the mid-1970s. The concept has since been adopted in the United States and Australia.

According to Gamlath, a senior lawyer attached to the Attorney General’s Department, the scheme replaces the usual punitive approach to correction with “restorative justice.”

“We want to restore the person and bring he or she back to society. We want them to get involved in work and be worthy human beings,”he adds.