discourteous manner and disparaging remarks or sexual innuendos are often made to female visitors. Food received by remandees from their families is inspected by prison officers, but the haphazard and unhygienic inspection of items received causes disintegration and spoilage of the food, which becomes a source of frustration for inmates. Prison administrations state they resort to manual and haphazard search measures to detect the presence of contraband inside food parcels, as they do not have adequate officers or technological solutions to more efficiently counter the problem of contraband. Most prisons do not enable efficient postal communication, thereby severely limiting family communication for prisoners whose family members cannot visit them. As letters are required to be censored and scrutinized by the prison, in instances where officers are not proficient in languages other than Sinhala, the letters may not be sent by the prison. Phone booths are found only in the Welikada prison and the cost of each call has to be borne by the families of prisoners. The phonebooths however do not have facilities to make IDD calls, which is disadvantageous for foreign nationals. Although lawyers are allowed to meet with their clients in a separate room at most prisons, many prisoners cannot afford to remunerate their lawyers to visit them in prison as lawyers charge additional fees for such visits. This results in many defendants only meeting their lawyers in court, which adversely impacts the due process rights of a defendant to prepare a vigorous defence as they are virtually cut off from their lawyer due to the lack of adequate communication facilities provided in prison. 7. Grievance Mechanisms It was observed that prisoners are readily able to report their grievances to the Commission when the Commission visits prisons. However, they are reluctant to use the internal grievance mechanism of the prison due to the delays associated with the procedure and the experience of other inmates who did not receive a remedy after lodging complaints. Many inmates are of the opinion that making a complaint against an officer will not result in a fruitful outcome as Superintendents are biased in favour of the officers and no action will be taken, or that the officers may not convey their requests to the Superintendent in the first place. Some feared it might lead to reprisals from officers and the Commission has been notified of prisoners who were allegedly harassed and threatened for complaining to the Commission. There is a privacy concern inherent in the grievance mechanism when prisoners speak to the Superintendent during his rounds or when a subordinate officer is present in the Superintendent’s office when an inmate is making a complaint. Badulla Remand prison was found to provide every ward with a complaints book through which requests and complaints could be submitted anonymously and Jaffna Remand Prison had a complaints box for prisoners’ complaints. The Commission was informed that some judges undertake monthly visits to prisons and may even conduct rounds and inspections, which allows prisoners to report grievances to x