Chili vegetation in Mahara Maximum Security Prison.
When Tharaka* started serving his sentence at the Pallansena Youth Correctional Centre, he had never given much thought to gardening. He couldn’t imagine himself caring for plants and crops, much less making a living out of it.
However, during his 4.5-year sentence, he played a significant role in the prison garden, learning skills that can serve him well in Sri Lanka’s evolving food security situation.
Over the last decade, Sri Lanka has experienced severe weather patterns causing rising temperatures, increased drought frequency, reduced soil fertility, and crop destruction from floods or storms. As a result, food production has become more difficult and uncertain.
Inevitably, this has had an impact on prisons, jeopardizing the national prison service’s capacity to ensure minimum living conditions for prisoners as outlined in the UN Standard of Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (also known as the Nelson Mandela Rules).
Globally, these climate change disruptions mean supporting climate change resilience in prisons has become a priority for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in many of the more than 50 countries where it is engaged. Without prejudice to its efforts to restrict incarceration as a measure of last resort, UNODC aims to equip prison systems with concrete strategies on climate disruption preparedness and mitigation.
The vision is to do this in ways that enhance the prospects of ‘green’ prisons that make greater use of environmentally friendly and energy-efficient management practices while, at the same time, supporting the rehabilitation and social reintegration of prisoners.
In Sri Lanka’s case, prisons were encouraged to grow crops as part of the government’s strategy to ensure consistent food supplies and to mitigate the fear of food insecurity.
To support this policy, UNODC, in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), worked with the Department of Prisons in 2022 to establish model farms in two prisons: the Mahara Maximum Security Prison and the Pallansena Youth Correctional Centre.
The program’s main objective was to promote the physical and mental well-being of prisoners and provide participants with skills that would be useful outside the prison walls. However, the urgent need for prisons to become more resilient in the face of climate change meant they achieved much more.
Both prisons benefited from fully equipped greenhouses, mushroom production facilities, solar-powered water systems, and the provision of tools and machinery. In total, over 50 officers and nearly 300 prisoners received training on best agricultural practices and how to use the facilities.
Mr Upuldeniya, who works as Assistant Superintendent of Prisons at Pallansena Youth Correctional Service, described how staff and prisoners have gained a wealth of knowledge and skills in modern agricultural practice as a result of the project. “The equipment and technical guidance we received from the UN has helped us streamline our agriculture activities while being resilient to various climate conditions, mainly flooding. Following this pilot initiative, we have seen our annual income from the agriculture output rise by around 40 per cent in 2023.”
Mr. Wickramanayaka, an Agriculture Instructor at the Mahara Maximum Security Prison, expressed his delight that, thanks to the newly established facilities and training, they had been able to collect over 60 kg of chilies and more than 200 kg of mushrooms. He added: “Prisoners now have the knowledge and experience necessary to be gainfully employed in a farm, landscape enterprise, or even to run a home garden upon their return to society.”
Kasun*, a prisoner part way through his sentence, agreed. “When they first said agriculture, there was no interest. But later we came to like it very much. In the future, when we gain our freedom, the knowledge that we gained will enable us to grow some vegetables or fruit, even if it’s on a small scale, to provide our own food.”
Indeed, Tharaka hasn’t stopped gardening since his release. “I am now cultivating vegetables and fruits such as eggplant, beans and capsicum and bananas in a land area of over one acre. Today, I feel content with my life.”
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* Names of prisoners have been changed to protect identity
This story is the first of a series about climate resilience in prisons.
