National security in Sri Lanka continues to be understood too narrowly, as the capacity to detect threats, neutralise adversaries and maintain order through force and surveillance. The deadly violence at Negombo Prison, in early July 2026, which claimed 31 lives, most of them remand prisoners, has, once again, exposed the bankruptcy of this approach. Overcrowding at three to four times designed capacity is not an administrative inconvenience. It is the predictable product of a security-driven system that prioritises arrests over adjudication, custody over accountability, and containment over repair. A nation that warehouses thousands of its citizens, many of them young, poor and still presumed innocent, in conditions that breed violence, radicalisation and organised crime, is not securing itself. It is manufacturing the next generation of instability.
This reality demands the fundamental paradigm shift argued for in Riza Yehiya's framework for sustainable nation-building in pluralistic societies: a move from a security-driven to a justice-driven approach to national security.
Yehiya correctly identifies that the greatest threats of the 21st century are internal, ethnic polarisation, religious extremism, systemic corruption, trans-generational trauma and the exploitation of domestic divisions by external powers. A security-driven model treats symptoms through surveillance, militarisation and exclusion. A justice-driven model addresses root causes by establishing equitable systems, remedying grievances and ensuring every citizen has a genuine stake in the nation's future. The former is reactive and can be imposed. The latter is preventive and must be built collaboratively. Equal justice, without discrimination on grounds of caste, colour, race, religion, language or region, is not a moral luxury; it is the indispensable foundation of holistic nation-building and, therefore, of durable security.
Recent remarks by Supreme Court Justice Yasantha Kodagoda have brought judicial clarity to the precise mechanisms that sustain this crisis. In a widely noted statement, he described the decision to grant or refuse bail as one of the most sensitive a judicial officer must make. Arrest itself damages reputation and liberty. Remand multiplies that damage, further eroding fundamental rights and freedoms. These decisions must often be reached under severe time pressure, amid intense media attention, political sensitivity and strong public or victim expectations that the suspect remain in custody. Justice Kodagoda emphasised a principle that is routinely disregarded in public discourse: the presumption of innocence.
Victims and sections of the public frequently treat arrest as proof of guilt and view remand as the beginning of punishment. Judges, however, remain bound by the Bail Act, the established rule that bail is the norm and refusal the exception, parliamentary intent and judicial precedent. They cannot decide on the basis of media narratives, social-media outrage or the political identity of the accused. Social media, he noted, frequently distorts judicial statements and compounds the pressure.
These observations are not abstract. They explain why Sri Lanka's prisons remain chronically overcrowded; why the majority of inmates are remand prisoners, and why violence of the kind seen at Negombo was foreseeable. When detection-driven arrests, particularly in narcotics cases, are followed by routine or prolonged remand, often extended by forensic delays and restrictive bail interpretations, the system generates the idleness, gang control and radicalisation that eventually erupt into lethal disorder. Every unnecessary day spent in such conditions is not merely a human-rights failure; it is a contribution to future instability.
Restorative justice mechanisms provide the practical architecture through which the required paradigm shift can be operationalised. Where retributive justice asks only what law was broken and who must be punished, restorative justice asks who was harmed, what they need, and how the offender, the victim and the wider community can repair the damage. It insists on active accountability, victim voice, community participation and reintegration rather than isolation and stigma. Properly designed and rigorously applied, it reduces the volume of cases entering an already overwhelmed prison system, lowers recidivism, rebuilds institutional legitimacy and denies extremists the grievances they weaponise.
Sri Lanka is not starting from zero. The Community Mediation Boards, established under the Mediation Boards Act of 1988, constitute one of the most extensive and effective restorative infrastructures in the region. More than 329 boards, staffed by approximately 8,500 trained volunteer mediators, drawn from local communities, handle close to a quarter of a million disputes annually. Settlement rates for mediated cases approach 70 percent; overall clearance rates exceed 80 percent. Resolution times are measured in weeks. Costs are nominal. Certain civil claims and a defined schedule of minor criminal offences are mandatorily referred before court proceedings can begin. This hybrid model, state-supervised yet community-delivered, builds on indigenous traditions of village-level dispute resolution while operating within a modern statutory framework. Complementary tools already exist: community-based correction orders, suspended sentences, conditional discharges and probation.
The present crisis requires deliberate expansion and strategic integration of these mechanisms. The majority of the prison population consists of unconvicted remand prisoners, a large proportion held on narcotics-related charges involving low-level possession or dependency rather than organised trafficking. Mandatory or strongly presumptive referral of suitable minor and non-violent offences to mediation or community-based corrections before or instead of remand would immediately ease pressure.
Special mediation panels for drug-dependent offenders, combining accountability with treatment pathways, would interrupt the cycle that currently feeds both overcrowding and criminal networks inside prisons. Post-sentence or post-release restorative conferences can reduce reoffending and community rejection. Community policing models that incorporate religious and community mediators for minor disputes would further prevent escalation of local conflicts into broader polarisation.
These measures align directly with the broader imperatives Yehiya outlines. Holistic human development requires both physical infrastructure and the intellectual, emotional, moral and civic capacities that produce responsible citizens. Restorative processes cultivate precisely those capacities: critical reflection on harm caused, empathy for those affected, acceptance of responsibility, and commitment to repair. They operationalise the principle that injustice in any form undermines the social contract and renders genuine security impossible. When every citizen is treated justly, the raw material for extremism diminishes. When communities are included in the resolution of harm, the incentive to secede or rebel declines. When governance demonstrates accountability through transparent, participatory processes, corruption and external manipulation find less fertile ground.
The colonial legacy that Yehiya analyses, legal, land, educational, religious, economic and psychosocial injustices that systematically privileged some while marginalising others, continues to manifest in contemporary ethnic polarisation, religious extremism, systemic corruption and geopolitical vulnerability.
Restorative mechanisms, particularly those that incorporate multi-faith and multi-ethnic mediation panels and carefully designed truth-telling processes, offer a domestic pathway to address historical grievances without importing external templates that risk further division. A domestically led truth, justice and reconciliation mechanism that includes judicial expertise, legal scholars and religious elders, with a clear mandate for truth-telling, reparations and restorative outcomes, would strengthen rather than undermine national cohesion.
Critical safeguards remain essential. Restorative justice is not a universal solvent. It fails, and can compound harm, when power imbalances are ignored, participation is coerced, agreements lack enforcement, or serious organised violence and high-risk cases are forced into inappropriate processes. Sri Lanka's existing mediation system has succeeded precisely because its jurisdiction is carefully limited, its mediators are community-rooted yet trained, and its processes remain interest-based rather than politicised. Scaling it into higher-stakes domains requires professional gatekeeping, independent oversight, rigorous training and political will that prioritises long-term legitimacy over short-term optics. House-arrest legislation with electronic monitoring, currently under consideration, is a useful intermediate tool. It is not a substitute for genuine restorative diversion that repairs harm and reintegrates citizens.
The national security dividend is substantial. Every preventable day spent in overcrowded, under-resourced prisons, increases the risk of riots, the hardening of criminal identities and the radicalisation of the disillusioned. A justice system perceived as arbitrary or discriminatory erodes the social contract and creates openings for external actors to exploit domestic divisions. Conversely, a system that demonstrates fairness, speed, and the capacity to repair, rather than merely punish, strengthens state legitimacy, reduces the production of future threats and builds the social resilience necessary to withstand both internal shocks and geopolitical pressure. Insulating the nation from the localisation of global polarisation becomes more feasible when citizens experience the state as a protector of rights rather than an arbitrary power.
Justice Yasantha Kodagoda has performed a public service by speaking plainly about the human and institutional cost of treating remand as routine. The larger question is whether the political and security establishment will treat his observations, together with the structural analysis advanced by Yehiya, as a call to systemic reform, or allow the same pressures and practices to continue generating the overcrowding, resentment and violence that ultimately undermine the very security the system claims to protect. Justice administered fairly, promptly and with genuine regard for rights is not the opposite of security. It is its indispensable precondition.
(This analysis is offered in the interest of national security, institutional reform, and public safety)
By Mahil Dole — Senior Superintendent of Police (Retd.), Former Deputy Director in Charge, Counter-Terrorism Desk, State Intelligence Service (2005–2009)
This article was originally published in The Island on July 21, 2026.