ARMENIA PENAL STATISTICS FOR 2013: MORTALITY RATE ALMOST TWICE HIGHER IN ARMENIA THAN COE AVERAGE

14:35 | February 11,2015 | Social

The Council of Europe has published its 2013 Annual Penal Statistics,
which include a survey on prison populations in Europe and a survey
on alternatives to pre-trial detention and on community sanctions
and measures.

The report says Armenia has seen high increase in prison population,
besides, spending per inmate is among the lowest in CoE region.

Prison population: 4,698 inmates; this is 155 inmates per 100,000
inhabitants (slightly above average). This number includes 27
juvenile offenders, out of them 9 younger than 18 years old. The
prison population has grown by 7.8% from 2012; the country is among
top ten countries where the prison population grew by more than 5%.

Total number of releases in 2012 was 1,752; it amounts to 58 per
100000 inhabitants.

Capacity is used beyond standard (106 inmates per 100 available
places), here Italy with 148 people per 100 places is a champion,
Andorra with 32 is the lowest.

Share of females in prisons is 4.7% (average for the CoE region).

Almost 70% are sentenced to 3-10 years – this is almost two times
higher than the CoE average for this sort of sentences. Only in
Azerbaijan (78%) this indicator is higher.

Mortality rate was almost twice higher than the CoE average, 60 people
per 10,000 inmates, out of them some 6 people committed suicide –
this is an average indicator for the CoE region.

Total budget spent by Prison Administration in 2012 was roughly 11,9mn
euro. Average daily expense per inmate was assessed at 6.65euro, which
is among the lowest and is comparable to such countries as Croatia,
Georgia and Moldova. It is 15 times lower than the CoE average of 98
euro. The lowest daily expenses per inmate are in Russia (slightly
over 2 euro/day) and Greece (slightly over 3 euro/day). The highest
spending per inmate per day is in Sweden (318 euro/day).

Factors that influenced prison population: . Changes in criminal
law: No;

. New legislation concerning certain categories of prisoners: No;

. Amnesties: 0;

. Individual pardons: 5 individual pardons granted on 1st October 2013.

. Collective pardons: 0;

Data were not available for Nagornoâ~@~PKarabakh.

The economic crisis hampers improvement of conditions in European
prisons

Spending per inmate in European prisons has decreased during the
economic crisis, and this has likely caused a negative impact on
the quality of life of persons in custody. The crisis has not had a
significant effect on the number of individuals in custody, although
there has been a minor reduction in prison overcrowding. These are
some of the conclusions that can be drawn from the 2013 Council of
Europe Annual Penal Statistics (SPACE I and SPACE II surveys), which
were published today.

On the other hand, the average prison population rate – which indicates
the number of individuals in custody per 100,000 inhabitants –
increased by 2.7% between 2007 and 2012. This, however, also varied
greatly across countries, many of them experiencing significant
increases or reductions.

There was a slight increase in the total proportion of foreign inmates
(14.1% of all inmates were foreigners in 2013 versus 13% in 2012).

This proportion was above 30% in many Western European countries and
around 2% in Eastern European countries. There was also an increase
in the proportion of inmates from EU member states (from 34% to 37%).

The SPACE survey is conducted for the Council of Europe by the
Institute of Criminology and Criminal Law of the University of
Lausanne. The SPACE I 2013 survey contains information from 50 out of
52 prison administrations in the 47 Council of Europe member states,
whereas SPACE II contains information from 47 probation agencies.