A General Amnesty To 510 Prisoners To Mark Christmas

Media Spokesperson for the Department of Prisons, Thushara Upuldeniya said, a general amnesty was granted to 510 prisoners islandwide yesterday (25) to mark Christmas, Further he said, that Christian prisoners have also been facilitated to engage in festivities and worship with their families. In this instance   35 inmates were released from Welikada Prison, Borella.

 According to the 2017 Census and Statistics Report compiled with 2016 data, direct admissions of convicted and un-convicted prisoners to prison  was 24,060 . Out of this number, 9,791 were admitted to the Welikada Prison.  In 2016, the number of un-convicted Buddhist prisoners amounted to 55,667 (58.8%), Hindu prisoners 19,563 (20.7%), Muslim prisoners 3,745 (14.5%), Roman Catholic prisoners 4,120 (4.4%), other Christian prisoners 1,542 (1.6%) and 18 were from other faiths.
Statistics relating to the custody of remand prisoners revealed that 37,044 admissions took place during 2016 which is a marginal drop of 8,766 admissions from 2015’s 45,810 admissions.

Admissions of convicted and remand prisoners island wide were 118,715 in 2016.