Agenda Item Five

THE WAYS AND MEANS TO ENHANCING THE
REHABILITATION FUNCTION OF CORRECTIONS.

- P.H.M. Ratnayaka - Sri Lanka. -

1. Introduction.

The task of Reformation and Rehabilitation of Offenders in Sri Lanka is largely the responsibility of the Prison Department. Way back from 1877 with the establishment of a unified Prison System, significant changes have taken place in our Penal System which has most of the characteristics prevailing in many advance systems in the world. We were benefited largely by the findings of three Prison Commissions during the last Century and also the experiences of some of our own eminent Correctional Administrators who molded and shaped the present system.

Today every effort is being made to enhance correctional functions in our Penal Institutions, with a view to rehabilitate offenders. Vocational training based on most of our traditional industries, agriculture and animal husbandry, projects to enhance educational, moral and spiritual standard of prisoners, programmes to elicit and identify the talents and skills of inmates are among many correctional functions undertaken in our institutions. Training programmes are now being initiated to give prisoners Computer training so that their knowledge will be abreast with the outside world once they are released from custody.

2. Problem of Prison overcrowding.
However, all these should not be taken to mean that all goes well in our prisons, most of which are over 100 years old. They were built at a time when the population was
- 2 -
less than a third of the present 18? million. During the last century the pattern of crime has itself undergone a radical change, particularly after two insurrections in 1971 and 1988. The criminalisation of our society is reaching dangerous proportions with disappearances of persons in the recent past, the on going war in the North, the availability of sophisticated weapons of destruction, gang-warfare as features of today's crime scene. Drug related offences which were not heard of about a decade and a half ago are taking most of our law-courts' time.

The net result of all what is said above is the overcrowding of Prisons. It is not just overcrowding with a few heads above the authorised strength in comparison. Our Prisons are literarily bursting at their seams. In some big prisons the rate of over-crowding is about 400%. This overcrowding brings in its wake a host of serious problems to Prison Administration. It causes severe strain on the essential services, results in serious health hazards, creates security problems, encourages subversive activities in prisons and more than anything else it disrupts reformation and rehabilitation functions. Hence overcrowding is a major obstacle to our correctional functions.

3. Need for Community base non-custodial sentencing.
In considering the problem of overcrowding the inevitable question that arises is whether it is necessary for all those who are in prison, to be where they are. In the year 1997, according to Prison Statistics, of the total prison population, 83.8% or 15,202 prisoners had sentences under one year, and 79% of the admissions were for default of
- 3 -
fines. Imprisonment is said to be the last resort of a Correctional System and will be generally imposed either when the offender appears to be a serious danger to the public if left at large, or for persistent recidivism or where the circumstances of the offence have aroused community disapprobation.

The inclusion of fine defaulters and short termers, into above category may not be fair. Most of the first offenders too need not have found their way to prison. Apart from the deleterious effects of imprisonment it is seen that a large number of these short-termers, fine defaulters, and First Offenders will not benefit or will have no time to benefit from our Prison Correctional programmes. On the contrary there is every likelihood of most of them leaving the prison as worse men and women than when they entered it. For them the best treatment would have been the non-custodial alternatives to imprisonment.

Even though the increasing need to recognize the useful role of non-custodial and semi-custodial alternatives to imprisonment has been emphasised by our Criminologysts, and Correctional Administrators for the past few decades except for probation the process of making legal provisions for their introduction to our penal system has been very slow and as a result the few community based treatment or non-custodial treatment programmes introduced in our country are either in the experimental stage or two early for a proper evaluation. Meantime, the prison Department taking the advantages of the existing legal provisions, introduced certain community based rehabilitation projects for
- 4 -
prisoners with proven good behaviour, which have gained ground during the last few decades and proved to be successful.

4. Community based Treatment.
Accordingly, at present we have in our Country two categories of Non-custodial Community based projects.
I. Projects organised by the Prison Department for Prisoners serving terms of imprisonment. They are parole or Release of prisoners on licence, Granting of Home Leave and employment on work release projects.
II. Community based programmes established under specific enactments and administered by separate authorities such as Community Based Correction Orders, Probation and Mediation Boards.

I. Projects organised by the Prison Department for Prisoners serving terms of imprisonment.
[I] Parole or Release of Prisoners on Licence.
This is a form of early release mechanism operated under the Department of Prisons. The selection of prisoners for release is done by a Licence Board appointed by the Minister of Justice. There is no separate Parole law but the scheme has been operating since 1970, under the Prevention of Crimes Ordinance which gives powers to the Minister to release prisoners on licence. The Licence Board is headed by a retired Appeal Court Judge with two members from the Ministry of Justice and Police
- 5 -
Department. The other members of the Board are Commissioner General of Prisons, Chief Medical officer of the Prison and two members representing the Community.

The number released on Licence since the inception of the Scheme has been 1879 while the number of failures stands at 134. The average releases for a year is 95. The reasons for the low release rate are the necessity for careful scrutiny and caution in selecting the correct people and also administrative difficulties caused by lack of trained staff to handle this project.

[2] Home Leave.
Prisoners with good behaviour in the Prison after serving a reasonable period of his sentence are allowed to go home and stay with their families for one week. Prisoners are eligible for this concession once in 6 months. The rationale behind this Scheme is for the prisoner and the family to feel that the prisoner is a past of the family. He will get familiarized with the new developments in the family and take part in important decision making. He will be in touch with the family and will continue to have his sense of responsibility towards the family. This will also give him an opportunity to continue his relationship with society, thus helping his acceptance on his release from Prison. Up to now 3,864 prisoners have benefited from this Scheme which started in 1974.

- 6 -
[3] Work Release.
This scheme is in operation since 1974. Selected prisoners in the last two years of the prison sentence for whom suitable employment can be found in the community are sent to work either from the Prison or from a Work Release Centre. They receive normal or near-normal wages which they can sent home to their families or save in a deposit account to be withdrawn on release. The prisoners will work unsupervised by prison staff. They move with the public, get use to respect their peers, build good relationship with the public. This training will serve to be very useful when time comes for them to assume their places in the Community on release from the Prison. 3718 offenders have enjoyed so far the benefit of this scheme.
II. Non-custodial community based Schemes administered by Authorities other than the Prison Department.

[1] Community based Correction Orders.
The concept of Community Service was introduced in 1972 and the law was amended in 1979 and 1985. However, due to the absence of an administrative mechanism to implement, this excellent alternative to custodial sentencing was not made use of. With the introduction of the Community based Corrections Act No. 46 of 1999 a new Department has been established to implement the Community based Correction Orders. The Department has started its work a few months ago in the Administrative Districts of Colombo as an experimental project. As the results appears to be satisfactory preparations are underway to expand the Scheme to other parts of the country.
- 7 -
The Community based Correction Order allows courts to provide a sentence designed to rehabilitate offenders in the community without going to prison. He will stay with his family and continue to assume his role while performing the work required by the Community based Correction Order. He will work at some Government, semi-government or social service organisation on projects that would benefit to the public such as gardening or cleaning up public places. This sentence could be issued only with the consent of the offender.

From the time of the establishment of this new Department of Community based Corrections, 694 persons out of which 14 are women have been given this sentence. Of them 671 were for offences related to drugs & illicit liquor. The court can also order a supervised programme that provides treatment for alcohol or drugs. The maximum hours of work required to perform are 300 over a period of 1 year of which 10 hourswork should be performed for a week. There is a work supervisor and if the offender fails to observe the conditions governing the order, the court has the option of imposing the original sentence.

Community based Correction Order appears to be an excellent alternative to improvement which prevents the offender being exposed to the deleterious effects of imprisonment.

- 8 -
[2] Probation.
This is probably the oldest non-institutional treatment measure introduced in our country. It started in 1944 under the Department of Prisons and by 1956 developed into a full fledged service. In the year 1956, it was separated from the Prison Department and formed the Department of Probation and Child Care Services. It has to be pointed out that this service effectively reduced the post-war upsurge in prison admissions where over 3000 persons was diverted from the prison system [annually] to the care of the Probation Officers.

However, it is noticed that from about the year 1960, the numbers under probation has declined. The figures for 1996 is sadly as low as 625. Since of late probation appears to have lost the appeal as sentencing mechanism. Administratively too the Probation Department appears to be facing problems with the decentralization of the administration resulting from certain amendments made to the country's Constitution.

[3] Mediation Boards.
This is mainly a dispute resolving mechanism which will restrict minor disputes and minor offences going before a Court of Law. Strictly speaking, it cannot be called a Correctional measure. However it has the potentiality to reduce the number of would be offenders at the early stage of ajudication. The community is directly involved in settling the dispute by discussion and with the consent of the parties concerned. There are no judges and lawyers. The parties involved in the dispute freely discuss the issue in the
- 9 -
presence of a Mediator. The settlement is entirely on the free will of the parties involved in the dispute. The Mediation Boards are handling disputes which come direct to them and also those reported to them by the Police of a Court of Law.

Mediation Boards are operating in Sri Lanka under the Mediation Board Act No. 72 of 1988 which was amended in 1997. At present there are 238 Mediation Boards all over the country with 5568 Mediators attached to them. They are volunteers recommended by Religious Leaders, and Principals of Schools, Social Service Organisations, and District Registrars. Their appointment is for a period of 3 years and they do not get a remuneration for their work. In the year 1999, 98,260 disputes have been delt with by the Mediation Boards and 57,292 or 58.3% have been resolved to the satisfaction of all parties involved, without referring them to Courts.

The Mediation Boards have now proved to be very effective Mechanism to resolve disputes. Had these disputes gone before Courts the number of Convictions would have increased, and many persons would have found their way to Prison.

5. Conclusion.
Despite all above efforts, the stark reality is that the admissions to our prisons continue to be increasing. From the year 1990 in 1997 there has been an increase of 4015 in the convicted prison population. It is hard to imagine therefore, that the use of imprisonment can continue to be resorted to, in the future not only due to lack of accommodation in the
- 10 -
already overcrowded prisons, but also due to the cost of their maintenance which would be so overwhelming that there is likely to be increasing questioning by the public of the social benefit gained by locking up more and more people in prisons. The only alternative in such a situation, would be the introducing of more and more community based rehabilitation Schemes for Offender Correction in our country.

-------

The Ways and Means to Enhancing the Rehabilitation
Functions of Corrections.

[Abstract]
P.H.M. Ratnayaka - Sri Lanka.

The rehabilitation function of Corrections in Sri Lanka has been largely the responsibility of Prison Department.

Due to deleterious effects of imprisonment, a fact realized through years of experience and over-crowding of Prisons due to many sociao-economic factors the Correctional Administrators were compelled to bring to the notice of the Authorities the urgent need to review the existing Penal System.

The above situation has resulted in the emergence of the concept of Community based corrections like in many other countries.

Since then there has been two fold developments noticed.
[1] From 1970s onward, the Prison Department began to introduce non-supervised or semi-supervised Community projects for prisoners with proven good behaviour. They are Parole/Release on Licence, Home Leave and Work Release projects. This is in addition to moving the bulk of the non-dangerous and short-term prisoners to Open Prisons and Prison Work Camps with minimum supervision.
[2] New legislation was brought in to introduce Probation, Community Service Orders and Mediation Boards, to prevent unnecessary admissions to prisons and to adopt more effecitve and less-expensive correctional measures.

The Prison organized schemes have shown successful results with negligible failure rates. However, due to necessity of adopting caution to prevent wrong persons being released and also due to administrative reasons such as lack of trained staff, difficulty in finding jobs for work release projects and financial constraints the prisoners diversion to these schemes has been slow.

Probation, Community Service Orders, and Mediation Boards are being administered by separate Departments. The Probation which started and enjoyed its hey'day under Prison Department is now administered by Probation Department. The pgoress of this excellent non-custodial scheme began to show down in the recent past due to disinclination of courts to make probation orders and administrative difficulties.

The Scheme of Community based Correction Orders which started a few months ago after the legal provision being made under a new Act is gaining grounds showing good results.

Mediation Boards have proved during the last decade that they are capable of restricting effectively the non-serious offences and disputes unnecessarily going before our courts. They have been able to bring the Offender, Victim and the Community together to resolve most of their disputes to the satisfaction of all parties concerned in a process which is less-expensive.

The future of Rehabilitation function of Corrections in our country will largely depend on the Community based Correctional projects not only due to lack of accommodation in Prisons, but also due to realization of the General public of the paucity of benefits which could be achieved by locking more and more people in jails.

------