Pan Armenian News

27.05.2005 10:03

PUNISHMENT IS DEPRIVATION OF LIBERTY BUT NOT BAD CONDITIONS OF KEEPING
PRISONERS

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Combating corruption in the criminal-executive system of
Armenia has a specific character as the information that is circulating
within the system can cause corruption risks, Press Secretary of the
Armenian Justice Minister Ara Saghatelian during online interview organized
by OpenArmenia.com and PanARMENIAN.Net. In his words, presently works for
minimization of corruption risks are being carried out and a great deal of
work has been already done. `Some of the basic directions is the reformation
of the legal field, which regulates the interrelations between the prisoners
and the administration, the creation of conditions for exercising civic
control, and in addition the formation of a group of public observers under
the Justice Ministry’, A. Saghatelian noted. One of the instruments of
combating corruption in the criminal-executive system of Armenia is the
conduction of service investigations and calling to account the violators of
law on the basis of the information that is coming to the Justice Ministry
from various sources’, he noted. We proceeded to reforms in jails
immediately after the criminal-executive system was taken under the
jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice. It follows two principal
directions, these being structural and legal’, he noted. In his words, the
basic concept of reforming of the conditions the prisoners are kept in is
that the punishment itself is the deprivation of liberty but not the bad
conditions of keeping the prisoners. According to him, presently measures
for improving technical conditions for complex resolution of the problems
connected with health as well as social-psychological works are being
carried out.