This report seeks to place criminal justice reforms at the center of ongoing transitional justice debates and discussions in Sri Lanka. The country is eight years on from the end of the war, and in the early stages of its own transitional justice processes. The four mechanisms promised by the Government are either not yet operational (the Office of Missing Persons) or do not yet exist (the truth commission, the special court, and the office for reparations). While everything that is transitional justice related has received much energy and attention, much needed criminal justice reforms have received very little or arguably no attention at all. There is a serious danger that the special court and its prosecutorial mechanism—the primary avenue for criminal accountability for past wrongs—will be conceived in isolation to the existing criminal justice system. However credible, such a mechanism, necessarily temporary and which will address a relatively small number of cases, cannot be a substitute for an entire criminal justice system. The existing criminal justice system must be contended with and it is artificial and dangerous to discuss criminal accountability and the special court without equally considering the failures of the existing criminal justice system and the many aspects of the system that warrant urgent reform. This report highlights the need for developing a comprehensive criminal justice reform agenda that looks at the system holistically and to that end maps out the problem areas and the reforms needed. Alarmingly, however, the Government appears to be adopting a strategy of ad hoc, piecemeal and sporadic criminal justice reforms. This is evidenced by a number of reforms impacting on the criminal justice system either effected or attempted since the transitional justice commitments were made in September 2015. These are discussed in Part 1 of this report. Many of these came to fruition in almost total secrecy and/or are deeply flawed in substance. The haphazard approach to reforms signaled by what has happened to date raises concerns about the reform attempts yet to come. It also raises concerns about whether and how the problems of the criminal justice system—central to ensuring meaningful access to justice for all in the long run—will be addressed. The extent of the problems in the existing criminal justice system have been surveyed and extensive recommendations for reform made by a variety of national and international bodies. Part 2 of this report brings together, thematically grouped, recent recommendations made by the Consultation Task Force, the Special Rapporteurs on torture and the independence of the judiciary, the UN Committees on Torture and the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, and the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Violence Against Women. These observations and recommendations highlight the nature of reforms that are necessary, both to overhaul the criminal justice system as a whole and to give meaningful effect to the transitional justice mechanisms themselves.