Or, How to Prepare for an Unexpected Housing Shortage
One of the more overlooked consequences of a Government elected on the promise of accountability is that somebody eventually has to find enough accommodation for those whom the courts may ultimately decide deserve it.
The campaign pledge sounded wonderfully straightforward. Investigate. Charge. Prosecute. Convict where the evidence proves guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Recover stolen assets wherever possible. Justice, after all, is supposed to be blind.
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But justice also needs beds. or in Sri Lanka mats. Mr Swaminathan had a plan for a mattress for each inmate. From what we hear some but not all have. So in this depressed economy, even the prison mattresses are affected. Thats equity for you. Fair and square.
Should the anti-corruption drive gather serious momentum, the Department of Prisons may unexpectedly become one of the busiest branches of Government. Somebody, somewhere, ought perhaps to begin counting available cells with the same enthusiasm normally reserved for counting parliamentary seats.
There is, after all, no official league table for corruption. There is no Premier Division of Fraud. No Champions League of Bribery. Fraud is fraud. Bribery is bribery. Theft of public funds is theft of public funds. The Criminal Code has always displayed an admirable lack of interest in political colours.
Supporters of the accused will, naturally, continue producing increasingly imaginative explanations. Money simply “moved itself.” Contracts were misunderstood. Signatures mysteriously appeared. Public money accidentally behaved like private investment capital. One almost expects to hear that millions of rupees merely wandered off in search of a better return.
The law, fortunately, tends to be rather less imaginative. If a court convicts, it convicts.
If a judge sentences, the sentence is measured not in television appearances or parliamentary speeches, but in years, months and days.
Which raises an important logistical question. Perhaps Colombo should not enjoy a monopoly on distinguished former office-holders.
Maybe it is time for a National Prison Rotation Scheme. Why should one correctional institution enjoy all the celebrity inmates while the rest of the country’s prisons languish in relative obscurity? Surely there should be a more equitable distribution. After all, decentralisation has become something of a national policy objective.
Imagine the possibilities.
Three months in one establishment. Six months in another. Perhaps a transfer every so oftennot as punishment, but as a contribution to administrative efficiency. Provincial prisons would enjoy their own rotating collection of headline-makers. Local economies might even experience an uptick in newspaper sales.
More importantly, regular transfers would introduce an unexpected inconvenience.
Whatever little comforts, understandings or routines anyone might have painstakingly developed would require constant rebuilding. Every carefully cultivated arrangement would have to begin all over again. Any clandestine network would become an administrative headache requiring endless maintenance.
One suspects that even the most determined operator eventually tires of reorganising unofficial conveniences every few months.
It is, admittedly, a rather unconventional approach to prison management. But then Sri Lanka has never lacked imagination.
Naturally, none of this is to suggest that anyone should be imprisoned merely because the public is angry. Our constitutional order wisely insists upon investigation, due process, competent prosecution and, above all, conviction by an independent court. That safeguard protects the innocent every bit as much as it punishes the guilty.
Be that as it may, if the Government genuinely intends to pursue every credible allegation of corruption wherever the evidence leads, perhaps somebody should quietly ask the Commissioner General of Prisons one simple question: “How many vacancies do we actually have?”
It may yet prove to be one of the more important infrastructure questions of the decade.
