Tajikistan has begun reforming its penitentiary system, which will last until 2030. The Tajik Ministry of Justice hopes that with the help of implemented international standards, it will be possible to relieve closed institutions and build modern and equipped prisons. The government also plans to reduce the number of repeat offenders among former prisoners, prevent the spread of radicalism and extremism in prisons and improve the effectiveness of prison staff.
Today, Tajikistan has 19 penal institutions, including a penal colony for women in the town of Nurek 70 km southeast of the capital, one educational colony for juveniles in Dushanbe, four settlement colonies, five PDFs, and correctional institutions with strict, mixed and general regimes in various regions of the country. The oldest correctional facility is a prison in Dushanbe, built in 1935 with a capacity of 1,500 inmates. The others were also built before the 1950s, and many of them cannot be restored.
Tajikistan inherited its penal system from the Soviet Union and has long needed to introduce new, more efficient methods of management, taking into account modern conditions.
After several major riots in the country’s correctional institutions in 2018 and 2019, the government conducted personnel changes in the system of execution of criminal punishments and accelerated the process of adopting the Strategy for reforming the system, a draft of which had been under approval by agencies since 2015. The document was adopted only in July 2020, with a deadline of 2030, and the action plan for the implementation of the Strategy was approved in February 2021. The reform also includes the introduction of a probation system and the development of alternative non-custodial measures of criminal punishment.
By the way, the process of reforming the penal system in Tajikistan began in the late 80’s, but the collapse of the USSR did not allow to implement the planned changes in the system. The reforms were undertaken almost 30 years after the republic’s independence.
How many prisoners are there in closed institutions in Tajikistan?
According to the latest 2020 data published in the draft Concept on Probation of the Republic of Tajikistan, the number of convicted prisoners is approximately 13,300, including 186 women serving their sentence in the women’s correctional colony in Nurek and 56 juveniles serving their sentence in the juvenile reformatory in Dushanbe. Of the total number of prisoners serving their sentence, 45.7 per cent were first-time offenders and some 20.5 per cent were convicted of offences related to the illegal sale of drugs. Over the past three years, 3,176 people previously convicted of criminal offenses have reoffended. The number of convicts who were released from serving their sentences due to the October 25, 2019 amnesty and reoffended is 203. Repeated crimes are mainly related to theft, drug trafficking and fraud. In Tajikistan’s correctional facilities, 86 people are serving sentences of less than one year in prison and 185 people are serving sentences of less than two years in prison. The State Penitentiary Institution of the Ministry of Justice noted that the number of convicts in Tajik prisons for previous years is classified information. According to the International Center for Prison Studies (ICPS), from 2001 to 2010 an average of just over 9,600 people were serving their sentence in Tajikistan’s correctional facilities.
What problems will the reform of the penal system solve?
In order to launch the reform process, the government of Tajikistan had to understand and accept the existing problems in the penal system. The problems were many, so the Ministry of Justice of Tajikistan called on non-governmental and international organizations working in the field of human rights protection to help develop a strategy, an action plan and to facilitate their implementation. All of the following problems must be solved after 10 years of reforms. Here are some of the main problems of the system spelled out in the Strategy: Overcrowding in correctional institutions. Although there is no official information about the number of prisoners, the Strategy notes that the high number of prisoners creates difficulties in accommodating them in correctional institutions. The problem of ensuring regime and supervision in closed institutions, security of inmates, prevention of offences in places of confinement, as well as educational work. Overcrowding of prisons and inadequate maintenance increases the risk of spreading extremism and radicalism among the prisoners. Overcrowded facilities make it difficult to treat inmates with tuberculosis and HIV. There are also difficulties with providing nutritious food, material and domestic conditions. The issue of employment of inmates is complicated by the absence of working workshops on the territory of closed institutions. Employment among prisoners, according to the data of the Main Penitentiary Administration of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Tajikistan, is about 20%.The employment is aimed at ensuring that the prisoner can pay moral damages, fines, alimonies or simply help financially his family. Weak work to reintegrate prisoners into society after release. Technical means of supervision and security in correctional institutions are outdated. Problems in social security of employees of the penal system, their safety and professional training. Difficulties with state funding of the penal system. This leads to ineffective performance of its functions and creates new problems: growth of criminalization and aggravation of the epidemiological situation. The buildings of Tajikistan’s correctional institutions do not meet modern requirements, as they were built in the 30s-50s of the last century. The degree of their deterioration is quite high and in many places cannot be repaired. Tajikistan still does not have a separate institution for the detention of those sentenced to life imprisonment. There is no a separate facility for the detention and treatment of convicted persons with tuberculosis. Five general education and two vocational lyceums with more than 750 students are functioning in the penitentiary institutions of the republic. This is not enough to provide convicts with a guaranteed secondary education as well as vocational training.
And all of these problems can be solved in 10 years?
At the moment, experts do not risk making predictions about whether the state will have the strength and time to implement the reform by 2030. But the fact that the Tajik authorities have already begun this process and are open to dialogue with human rights defenders is a great achievement, experts say. Parvina Navruzova, a lawyer at the Human Rights Center, said the reforms also focus on improving the performance of the staff of closed institutions, their professional training and security. After all, in the case of conflicts, which, for example, were in the Vahdat and Khujand colonies in 2018 and 2019, it became clear that the level of security in correctional facilities is insufficient and staff cannot subdue more than 1,000 prisoners. “The most unexpected news for us human rights defenders was when we read the Strategy Implementation Plan and saw many of the suggestions we made during the discussions there. For example, developing a mechanism for independent investigation of violence, cause of death, and other incidents within correctional facilities. We suggested that a prisoner who was sent to a punishment cell because of some violations could appeal this decision of the head of the prison in court, so that there would be no abuse of power by the management of the closed institution, and this was accepted, the adoption of an interagency comprehensive program of rehabilitation: medical, psychological, legal and religious, we did not expect,” – she says. In July, the Public Association “Center for Human Rights” in partnership with the GUIUN of the Ministry of Justice of Tajikistan begins implementing a new project “development of a comprehensive rehabilitation program and program of risk assessment and classification system for inmates. In her opinion, one of the important components of the reform is rehabilitation and psychological work with prisoners, improving detention conditions, effective correctional work and creating conditions for prisoners to obtain specialization and work while they are serving their sentence. “The important thing here is that when a prisoner is released, so that he has a specialty in demand – for example, an electrician, a plumber, a carpenter and so on. That way you can solve the problem of their employment after they get out, and you can hope that this person will not go back to prison, but will legally earn a living. That, of course, is the ideal, although we understand that there are related problems to be solved here,” she explains.
Why is it important that prisoners be held separately?
By international standards, a person convicted of fraud and someone incarcerated for extremism and terrorism or a serious crime cannot be held together. This increases the risk of conflict, riots and the cohesion of criminally oriented individuals. Reform of the system should eventually change the type of detention in Tajik prisons from collective (camp) detention to cell-based detention. The camp type is holding all prisoners together in one room. They all eat and walk together as well. This does not allow distributing them according to the degree of the crime committed and it is a threat of spreading the ideas of extremism among the convicts and rallying them around criminally-oriented convicts. It may cause the spread of criminality among inmates inside the prisons, it increases the threat of riots and provocations and in the end it interferes with the main principle of the places of incarceration – to correct the person who got there. The cell type of detention allows the prisoners to be separated according to the category of crimes committed, for example, for extremism, terrorism, murder, etc., and to be held separately. In Tajikistan, all closed institutions are of the camp type, where all convicts are held together, without separation. But several new facilities are being built with donor and budget funds. In 2022 it is planned to commission a new correctional facility in Vahdat, where prisoners will be held in a cell-type facility. The new building will be equipped with necessary equipment, including surveillance cameras throughout the institution, a centralized control station will be established to monitor the behavior of convicts, cameras will be equipped with X-ray surveillance (GPS). Also there are plans to purchase special vehicles for the transportation of the accused, defendants and convicts; the vehicles will be equipped with modern technical means of communication, surveillance cameras and satellite surveillance equipment. By 2025 a new pre-trial detention facility in Rudaki district and a special regime penal colony for life time prisoners, the location of which is not yet known, will be commissioned. Other facilities of various kinds will be built in the next 5 years.
How will prisoners be employed after release?
As a rule, prisoners often face stigma and discrimination after they are released – they are not hired when they learn that they have a criminal record and have served time in prison. This increases the risk that a former inmate may reoffend. Therefore, re-socialization of prisoners is one of the important goals of reform. “In 90 percent of cases, they are not hired. It is especially difficult with those who have been in prison for 10-15-20 years. Many have problems with their passports after they leave prison, and they often don’t have a place to register, and they can’t get a job without a passport,” explained lawyer Parvina Navruzova. The action plan for the implementation of the Strategy notes that by 2025, Tajikistan should develop a “Program of vocational training and employment of prisoners in prisons and those released from prison for the years 2021-2030,” which is designed to promote employment of citizens who have served their sentence.
What is the probation system and what is it for?
Probation is a new phenomenon in Central Asian countries. Probation refers to non-custodial alternatives to criminal punishment. It does not relieve from punishment, it just offers an alternative to incarceration. Alternatives can be fines, confiscation of property, compensation to the victim, community service, house arrest, prohibition to visit certain places, to communicate with certain people, to leave home at certain times, etc. On May 26 the human rights organization in Dushanbe “Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law” announced the launch of a new project “Piloting and approbation of the Probation Concept in the Republic of Tajikistan. The concept explains that the development of measures alternative to imprisonment will make it possible to achieve real correction of those who have committed a criminal offense. Especially those who have committed a crime for the first time and those who have committed crimes of small or medium gravity. It would also help to relieve the burden of imprisonment and reduce the burden on the state budget. The maintenance of a convict in prison, in general, costs much more to the budget of the country and to the families of the convict than non-custodial punishment. The draft Concept for the Development of Probation in Tajikistan states that 20% to 40% of convicts may become probation clients.