World Prisons
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Sri Lanka

Mahara Prison

MaximumLow
Verified
Aging · 5mo ago
Sources last reviewed on

Data is aggregated from public sources and may be incomplete or out of date. Always verify with primary sources before acting on any figure. See data sources.

For families

How to send mail, money, and visit Mahara Prison

Step-by-step guidance using the Sri Lanka system — addresses, money services, visit booking, what to bring on your first visit.

Open toolkit

Background

Mahara Prison is a maximum security prison, and is one of the largest prisons in Sri Lanka. Situated in the town of Mahara in the Western Province, it was built in 1875 by the British colonial government to ease the congestion at the Slave Island prison. It was used to house the prisoners employed in crushing stones at the Mahara quarry. The stone was used to construct the Port of Colombo and its associated breakwaters. Since its establishment, it has had a police post attached to it.

Source: Wikipedia article lead, CC-BY-SA.

Capacity

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Current population

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Occupancy

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Year opened

1875

Operational

Figures from official sources · verified 28 May 2026 · methodology

Facility profile

Operator

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Population held

Mixed/unknown

Opened

1875

Region

—

Security level

Maximum

Death-row facility

No

Conditions

No conditions summary available yet.

Visiting

No visiting information available.

Mailing

No mailing information available.

Practical info

Contact the operator's website for inmate-specific procedures.

Known issues

No major issues documented in our database.

Contact & address

No public contact details available.

Conditions Risk Score

Derived signal — not a judgement. How it's calculated

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Insufficient data
We don't have enough public data on this facility to score it. Have something to add? Send us a correction.

Related facilities

All in Sri Lanka →

Same country, matched on type + security level where possible.

Data completeness

24%

How many of our profile fields are populated. We surface this so families and researchers know the limits.

Sources

Cite this page

Under CC-BY-4.0. Include the URL and access date; the site is a living reference and entries can change.

APA
World Prisons. (2026). Mahara Prison. Retrieved October 15, 2026, from https://worldprisons.com/prisons/mahara-prison
Chicago
"Mahara Prison." World Prisons. Accessed October 15, 2026. https://worldprisons.com/prisons/mahara-prison.
BibTeX
@misc{worldprisons-mahara-prison,
  author = {{World Prisons}},
  title = {Mahara Prison},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://worldprisons.com/prisons/mahara-prison},
  urldate = {2026-10-15}
}