ARMENIA PUTS PRISONERS TO WORK PRODUCING CRAFTS FOR SALE
Avet Demourian

AP Worldstream
Apr 06, 2006

The men in simple black turtlenecks bend low over the workshop tables,
intently carving key chains, model ships, even an elaborate walnut
backgammon set in the pale light of an Armenian prison workshop.

These and other handicrafts will go on sale at the Prison Arts kiosk
at a weekend market in the center of the capital, Yerevan _ part of
a new program to occupy inmates’ time.

“Earlier it was their cellmates who ordered them around and forced them
to make this or that object,” said Tigran Navarsardian, the director
of the Erebuni prison in Yerevan. “Now they work for themselves and
are legally protected.”

The program is the brainchild of Justice Minister David Arutyunian
and the director of the ministry’s prison reform program, Nikolai
Arustamian.

“(The inmate) is occupied, he creates and gets satisfaction from this,”
Arutyunian said. “For many the financial aspect is secondary.”

The prisoners craft watches, religious medallions, woven wall hangings,
slippers and leather cases for mobile phones or keys, all of which are
affixed with labels in Armenian and English identifying the craftsman
and describing what materials were used. The label does not indicate
the sentence the artisan is serving and for what crime.

_ but the inmates eagerly volunteer that information.

“I’ve been ‘inside’ since I was 16,” said 34-year-old Fyodor
Matriashin, serving his sixth sentence for robbery. “I began making
wooden boxes when I first arrived, but if I used to give them away,
now I’m paid for them.”

Armenia’s 13 penitentiaries, home to some 3,000 inmates, had some
sort of manufacturing department during Soviet times, but over the
past decade and a half they have closed production and most of their
equipment has been carted away.

Today, a prisoners’ advocacy group called the Assistance to the
Prisoner Fund is trying to revive the manufacture of ceramics
and bricks at Erebuni, a special prison for repeat offenders. It
already has provided clothing for prisoners, cut and sewn in the
penitentiaries.

But it is the small craft workshops _ which at least in the case
of Erebuni, had no guards supervising inmates _ that seem to give
prisoners the greatest satisfaction.

“Just about everyone in the prison uses my cigarette-holders,” said
Abel Pogosian, a 32-year-old serving his five sentence for assault
who spends his days carving bone-and-metal cylinders.

“Now maybe someone on the outside will like them, too.”

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress