New regime for ministry of corrections and legal assistance
By Keti Arjevanidze
Wednesday, October 31
Minister of Corrections and Legal Assistance of Georgia, Sozar Subari, released a new working principle in the department; he proposed to the Early Release Committee and Council to change the working agenda, on October 30. Due to the large number of prisoners in Georgia, Subari accounts that the council and the committee should assemble and discuss issues on early release twice a month.
According to the minister, now the process of probationers release is over, but approximately after two weeks, when the committee is authorized, they will assemble and the processes will go on. “Let’s avoid concretizing the number of prisoners, it is not correct to create some wrong expectations,” said the minister. During the last few days, the ministry of corrections and legal assistance released about 350 prisoners. Subari doesn’t exclude the probationers' release in the near future.
The minister also touched on the issue of prisoners suicide due to different reasons: "in some cases, the reason is very serious, sometimes they just want to meet the minister,” he appealed to prisoners, not to do it, because “I will not encourage these kinds of acts in order to avoid future repetition of the action, said the minister.
Subari also discussed the issue of staff changes. According to the minister, the process is going on, “it is impossible to fire all the employees simultaneously, but the people who are criminals and were acting inadequately will be fired. We will try to rescue the people who were not violating the law, we will try to retrain them and maintain them on their job. The people who are unacceptable for the system, they will leave the job,” stated Subari.
According to the minister, on the issue of amnesty, the parliament is working Subari said that there will be more than 700 prisoners amnestied; he added that the parliament is responsible for the final decision, but the involvement of the ministry is essential and the collaboration among them will be close. The Minister also added that on October 30, some prisoners from prison N8 will be transferred to a light regime prison. “The attitude is going to be changed,” said the minister.
About torture facts in the prisons, Subari said that the investigations are on, but “to investigate the cases of torture will be a long process,” he said.
The Minister also commented on the issue of underage prisoners, he said that there is a very difficult situation in this aspect and he explained that special conditions will be created for underage prisoners in order for them to recover from the existing situation.
