On 19th and 20th of May, 2011, two important events were organized by Civil Society Institute and Penal Reform International (PRI) in Yerevan, during which Tsira Chanturia, the Regional Director of PRI (located in Tbilisi, Georgia,) was invited to give an opening speech and present the Georgian experience in dealing with juvenile justice and life convicts for showing a possibility of further reforms in these fields in Armenia.

We had a chance to interview Ms. Chanturia on the issues of juvenile justice and life convicts.

PRI is starting a new three year program about juvenile justice sector reform. We would like to know what problems do you see in this field, what is the situation in Armenia, and what is the situation in Georgia, (if we draw a comparison)?  

So we are starting this three year project under the funding support of the European Union Delegation in Armenia. We are very glad to have this possibility, because so far our Regional South Caucasus Office has implemented juvenile justice project only in Georgia. So now we have an opportunity to work with our civil society partners - Civil Society Institute and Children Support Center Foundation- and implement this project.

As regards to challenges that exist in the juvenile justice system in Armenia, to my knowledge and understanding, one of the problems is the lack of rehabilitation means for juveniles, who are in conflict with the law, and for this purpose we will establish two rehabilitation centers, one of them will be in Abovyan, and we will provide social services, rehabilitation services for juveniles who are in conflict with the law, for instance those who are registered by the police or who are on probation, who get diverted from the criminal justice system, and in this centers we will provide them with some courses, social workers' assistance with the help of our social workers, there will be some psychological counseling for providing some legal assistance, vocational training courses, and also we will provide these services to those children who get released from the prison. So this is just one of the areas of our activities. Besides through our local partners we will be doing monitoring of the situation of children in prison custody, of children who are placed in special education institutions. And also the monitoring component will encompass trial monitoring into the cases of juveniles. So we will have an understanding how the legal system works in Armenia and what problems there are in terms of providing legal safeguards for children. We want to make sure that the legislative system is in line with the international standards.

Thus we will prepare and provide some recommendations to the Armenian authorities as to how to improve the situation for children, how to bring the situation in line with children's best interests.

One thing we will try to achieve with this project is to develop some alternative measures and sanctions for children including diversion, because according to international standards and best practices the children should be diverted from the criminal justice system as early as possible and children shouldn't be treated in the criminal justice system if there is such a possibility, so those children who commit minor offences, they shouldn't go through the criminal justice system, which is stigmatizing for them. Therefore we will try to come up with some alternatives together with the authorities. For instance in Georgia, the good development is that at least in four pilot cities we have juvenile diversion schemes when prosecutors are able to exercise their discretionary power, and not to start criminal proceedings against the juvenile who committed non-violent petty crime, so they divert children, and then the social workers work with the juveniles. There are some conditions with which these children should comply with, for instance there is some requirement that these children should go to school, attend some educational courses, so on. There is also mediation scheme, when the child and the victim are brought together for reconciliation scheme. This is something that has been working well in Georgia and it is something that can be replicated in Armenia.  

As regards to juvenile justice system in Georgia, one good development is also mandatory trainings for all criminal justice actors who work with children including police, judiciary, prosecutors, probation staff, so that they all have mandatory training in psychology and pedagogy, juvenile justice issues in order to be prepared to work with children. So I think it will be good if in Armenian legislation there is this mandatory requirement for criminal justice actors.

On the other hand the problem in Georgia is that prison overcrowding is still prevalent including in juvenile prison, so we are trying to promote some alternatives to imprisonment such as community service, also we hope the diversion will allow to keep the children away from the criminal justice painful proceedings.

All these actions are based on the international experience, since PRI's mandate includes developing and promoting international standards and international best practices, and this is something we will encourage.

One of the problems of the sector is the reintegration of the person, who committed a crime, in this case the juvenile, into the society.  What is the solution of this problem according to you? Who according to you should deal with this issue and how they should implement it?

We have experience with working with children, who have already committed some crime who face multiple problems, some of which stem from their family background, others stem from the community, and we think that the best way for reintegrating the juvenile is the holistic approach which considers all the needs that the children have in terms of educational, social, economic, recreational needs. So the best approach is to provide all these services that meet the children's rights- right to health, right to education, right to recreation. And definitely it is important to work with these children's families and to provide some counseling to the parents, because often the problems that these children face come from lack of supervision, care and support in their families. So the reintegration scheme should include this work with families. Besides the social skills of children need to be developed so that they are able to engage in positive activities, social events. Also life orientation skills should also be developed, since many children who come from poor families and who committed some crime, usually never think about what path they should take in life, what interest they have, so there should be assistance to help the children to think about this, in order they started to think positively by setting goals. Problematic is also that these children often have law self-esteem, thus this has to be boosted with psychological counseling. So all these activities are important components for the work directed for reintegrating the children into the society.  

To what extent are the rights of the life convicts defended in Armenia? What problems do you see in this field?

We have good cooperation with CSI and Prison Monitoring Group, who have undertaken a research on life convicts or lifers, and the findings of this research show that the problems and challenges the life sentenced prisoners face in prisons of Armenia are quite common to other prisoners as well. These include the access to prison healthcare, access to rehabilitation activities, communication with the outside world, i.e. the same problems that the other prisoners face. However, the situation with lifers is exacerbated with the fact that they have lengthier prison sentence, thus they have to spend longer time in prison than other prisoners. Also one more issue is the parole- conditional early release of a lifer, who already served 20 years according to legislation and is eligible for early release, however this didn't happen. So it is important to create a precedent in this case, which so far is problematic in Armenia. And in Georgia we are to work in this direction, since we only adopted this life imprisonment practice in 2000, and our lifers need to serve 25 years to be considered for parole.

Summarizing, can you mention the most urgent problems that need solution in penitentiary system in Armenia? 

There are several problems and it is a bit hard to focus on one, but as far as I know there are overcrowding problem in some prisons in Armenia even though the population there is not large as compared to Georgia's population number at prisons, in Armenia the number is around 5000, while in Georgia it is 24.000, still the infrastructure in Armenia needs to be refurbished and brought in line with international standards, which might mean constructing a new prison or repairing the existing one. But definitely the government needs to take measures to ensure that the prisoners have their minimum space requirements met, that they have their own beds, that ventilation and sanitation conditions are in line with the norms. Also the parole system should be brought in line with the international standards, and prisoners who are conducting well in prisons, who don't have disciplinary sanctions and who have served minimum period envisaged by the legislation should be given the possibility to be release early. This in its turn could solve the problem of overcrowding in prisons.

Interview by Sofia Manukyan

Source: www.hra.am