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Drug users constitute nearly half the number imprisoned in 2015
View(s):Nearly half of the convicted prisoners directly admitted to Sri Lanka’s jails in 2015 were users of narcotics, latest data compiled by the Dept of Census and Statistics reveals. This is a staggering total of 11,171 people or, 46.4% of the 24,086 convicts who entered prison last year. The majority of drug users (10,993) were men. The data also shows that, in 2015, a significant 67.3% of drug offenders in Sri Lanka’s jails were heroin users, while 32.7% were cannabis users.
The figures for 2015 show a slight increase over the previous year. In 2014, the percentage of drug users among direct admissions of convicted prisoners was 43.5%, while it was still lower in 2013, at 34%. The information is contained in the Prison Statistics of Sri Lanka 2016 released last month. The highest number of drug offenders in 2015, 7,621 were from the Colombo District, followed by Gampaha District with 1,406. The majority of them were between the ages of 30 and 40 (3,495), 2,862 were between the ages of 40 and 50 and 2,295 were between 22 and 30 years of age.
Nearly 4,500 drug users (the largest category) had Grade 6-9 education, while 2,730 had GCE O/L or A/Level. However, 2,430 of them had no schooling, and none had professional qualifications. A larger number of drug users (6,133) had never married, while 5,036 were married.
Nineteen of them were serving life or death sentences and another 335 were sentenced to more than one year. But the vast majority, 9,155 were serving sentences of one to six months. Nearly 7,000 of them had no fathers, while 3,691 had no mothers.
A total of 2,754 (24.6%) of drug-using convicts were first offenders and 5,529 (49.5%) were re-convicted prisoners while 2,897 (25.9%) were repeat offenders.