|
|
 |
 |
| Sunday, 1 December 2002 |
 |
|
 |
News |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
'You name it, they have it' : Well-stocked 'super market' inside Welikade Prison by Shanika Sriyananda Liyanage A market within the four walls of the Welikada prison has been in operation for sometime now. Popularly as the 'Super Market', almost all the items are available which are available outside with prices 50 percent cheaper than at a super showroom. No neatly arranged shelves ... no billing machines and no smartly dressed sales girls. It is 'hidden' in the prison premises and the goods are carried inside prisoners' bags, well informed sources told the Sunday Observer. The market has become a popular market among the inmates to buy wide variety of goods at very cheap prices. According to prison sources, the owners of the 'super market' are the remandees who are drug addicts. A shirt which is nearly Rs. 750 is on sale for Rs. 50, a sarong at Rs. 50 and a new pair of rubber slippers for a mere Rs. 20. A pair of brand new shoes worth Rs. 1500 outside goes for Rs. 100. Price of a cake of Rs. 5. A lunch packet, chicken or fish, is 10. The price list is unbelievable...! " This super market has every thing from perfume to sweets. You name it they have it", a high ranking official of the Prison Headquarters said, adding that the remandees, who are allowed visitors, operate the market, to earn money to buy their quota of 'kudu'. He attributed this mainly due to the free availability of drugs inside the prison. " Within a day, over Rs. 100,000 worth of drugs were being sold here. The daily income of a 'prison drug dealer' accounts to over Rs. 23,000. The remand prisoners who are addicted to drugs would sell their food, clothes and whatever they get from their kith and kin for heroin", he said. " We check each and every visitors thoroughly and chances are few to bring in drugs hidden inside lunch packets and other parcels given to the remandees. But, at times it is beyond our control since only two officers are on duty to check over hundreds of visitors", he said. However, he claimed that the existing laws related to drug offences, which intend to give the offenders a punishment by putting them behind prison bars for months and years assuming that they would get a chance of kicking off the habit, but is not fruitful since they get better chances to puff 'Kudu' (heroin) inside the prison. He said the situation is not common only to the Welikada prison but is same in other prisons - Mahara, Colombo remand, Negombo and Galle. "Still we have the out-dated prison laws introduced in the 1840s'. Latest rehabilitation methods, which separate, especially, the drug addicts from other prisoners should be implemented soon to bring down the escalating number of drug addicts. Otherwise, the person who is in jail for a minor offence will return to the society as a drug addict. Especially the young offenders are vulnerable", he pointed out. According to him, a handful of drug addicts could be rehabilitated through rehabilitation programs conducted by the Prisons Department but others would return again with drug charges. Meanwhile, the prison population swelled to 18,000. Of the total over 42 percent are in jail for drug offences out of which 95 percent are drug addicts. In 1981 convicted prisoners for narcotic offences was 5.3 percent but today the rate is zoomed by ten times. The majority of drug offenders are of the age of 19 to 30 while the highest number of them are Sinhalese, prison statistics reveal. According to the official, though there are programs to control the drug menace inside the prison, a considerable number of 'kudu packets' have been exchanged among the prisoners. " This is beyond the control of the prison officials. In the Welikada Prison, drug offenders belong to three categories : drug addicts, drug dealers and addicts serving imprisonment. As they are in the same cells they tend to continue with the use of heroin", he said. " Another major setback in rehabilitating them is their poor education background and the financial situation. Majority of drug addicts are from very poor families and with no sound education. Therefore they are not in a position to learn from rehabilitation programs", he pointed out. He said that to maintain a single prisoner, costs more than Rs. 200 per day and on the whole, amounts to nearly Rs. 1 million a day. " Though majority of the prison officers try to combat this menace, it is difficult to 'sweep out' all drugs from the prisons, since some prison officials are in connivance in the business, he alleged. He said that main cause for the increase in the number of drug addicts in prisons is the stress among them, free availability of drugs inside the prisons and low chances for 'release on licence'. He cautioned on a dangerous sub-culture slowly emerging in prisons due to drug menace. " The young drug addicts who do not have any mean of getting drugs inside the prisons have become 'prostitutes'. The number of homosexuals in prisons are very high now", he warned. Meanwhile, several attempts to get a comment from the Commissioner General of Prisons have failed. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
