Lawmakers have proposed establishing a Parliamentary Select Committee to address Sri Lanka's mounting case backlog and severe prison overcrowding, with over 1.1 million pending cases and prison populations exceeding four times capacity.
A proposal has been made in Parliament to establish a Select Committee aimed at resolving the substantial backlog of cases within Sri Lanka's court system. The Ministry of Justice reports that more than 1.1 million cases currently await resolution across the country's judicial institutions.
Several structural challenges have been identified as contributing to these delays. Vacant judicial positions, insufficient staffing within the Attorney General's Department, and prolonged timescales for obtaining reports from the Government Analyst's Department and Government Valuation Department have been cited as key obstacles. Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara has acknowledged in Parliament that the workload strain on the Attorney General's Department itself represents a significant bottleneck in case processing.
The judicial delays have created severe consequences within the prison system. Data from the Department of Prisons indicates that while facilities are designed to hold approximately 10,000 inmates, the current population exceeds 40,000. Notably, around 75 percent of those incarcerated are suspects awaiting trial outcomes, meaning their prolonged detention results directly from case delays rather than completed convictions.
The proposed Select Committee would operate under Parliamentary Standing Orders 100 to 110 and would be tasked with examining the underlying causes of the case backlog, formulating short-term, medium-term, and long-term remedial measures, and specifically addressing prison overcrowding. The committee would essentially assess systemic inefficiencies across multiple institutions contributing to the overall judicial logjam.
