26 July 2018 10:47 pm
Addressing the media at the Welikada Prison premises during a book launching ceremony, he said making prisoners addicted to reading would make them knowledgeable and wise.
He said that he hoped to request the President along with the Justice and Prison Reforms Minister Thalatha Atukorale to grant remission of sentence for prisoners who read the highest number of books from the prison library. He further said thirty prisons were found to be suitable for establishing libraries and ten have been selected to set up libraries.
“The prisoners should provide comments and criticism of the books they read to have their prison term reduced. Even the National Library and Documentation Services Board requested me to implement procedures to establish libraries in all the Prisons in the country to increase the prisoners reading habit,” he said.
“That will be easier to rehabilitate them,” he said.
Minister Kariyawasam said he would request the President to reduce the prison term for those who read the highest number of books.
“I told the National Library Services Board to put Thripitaka, Mahawansaya, stories of the Lord Buddha's past births Pansiya Panas Jathaka, the Holy Quran, the Holy Bible, biographies of political leaders like Nelson Mandela.
“We will see how many days of sentence remission we can get for an inmate, who read a lot.
“For the inmates who were sentenced to life imprisonment, the government can consider reducing their term, because no one would like to be in prison for long,” Minister Kariyawasam said.
While speaking at the ceremony Prison Reforms Minister Thalatha Atukorale said the Ministry had already started collecting information of inmates to get them released considering their stay at the Prisons.
“We will consider releasing the inmates except those who were involved in organised crimes,” she said.
She said that following a field investigation, the Ministry had found that some families of inmates were not willing to accept them. (Chaturanga Samarawickrama)
Video by Buddhi
Pix by Ishan Sanjeewa