Special prison will be built for 14-21 year old convicts.
By Tea Mariamidze
Friday, November 25
“We are starting an unprecedented project – the contraction of a special prison for convicts aged between 14 and 21 years,” Georgia’s Acting Minister of Corrections, Kakha Kakhishvili, told Parliament on Thursday while presenting the mandatory reports by the nominees for the Cabinet of Ministers.
The Minister added that the project is being implemented on recommendations and support of the European Union (EU).
“In our opinion, when convicts turn 18 it will not be right to transfer them to adult inmates’ facilities, which is why we are going to build a special prison for them,” Kakhishvili told lawmakers.
He stressed that the new prison would ensure all necessary conditions and programs that would support the young people to re-socialize easily when they left the penitentiary institution.
Moreover, the Minister announced that his body intends to initiate a new form of pre-trial measure to the new Parliament of Georgia.
“We plan to reduce the administrative detention terms, if the parliament supports our draft,” the Acting Corrections Minister added.
According to Kakhishvili at present only two forms of the pre-trial measures are operating in Georgia: a pre-trial detention or release on bail.
He said that the Ministry intends to introduce an alternative form – pre-trial probation, which is a court-approved agreement or contract between the prosecutor and defendant before a trial or a plea of guilty.
“We offer Parliament to introduce a pre-trial probation, in order to reduce number of pre-trial detainees,” stated Kakhishvili.
