[ad_1]
In Lithuania, over the past year, more than a thousand, about 16 percent. – The number of people in prison has decreased. Currently, the penalty is served by 198 people, counting 100,000. population, up from 232 two years ago.
This downward trend in prisoners will continue. Amendments to the law have entered into force that help broaden and increase the use of alternative penalties, abandon the outdated approach to serving convicts, and encourage convicts to change their criminal behavior through new methods of work.
This is the information officially published by the Ministry of Justice this summer.
However, these numbers and words are not a true mirror. Or are they just a crooked mirror reflection. Because the “new ways of working” are so far the exception, not the rule.
The convicts themselves say: no, the Soviet era has not yet left Lithuanian prisons.
And even those who left prematurely can return. Because they cannot live otherwise. Nobody taught them, they didn’t help them. They just closed them, planted them.
They may go back to the fact that the understanding of punishment by prison administrators, officials and legislators is usually just a high fence in prison dividing life between crime and punishment.
People who have been or are on the other side of the prison fence in one sense or another are talking about it: convicts and officials who see the prison system with their own eyes.
Everyone expects the correct decisions from politicians. Solutions are needed here, on the other side of the fence.
Only they are still missing.
By the way, another interesting figure: the maintenance of one prisoner per day costs on average about 30 euros (according to 2019 data).
About 1,500 people are serving their sentences in Lithuanian prisons this year. convicts
“I think that people who have committed minor crimes would benefit more in freedom, only specialists should work with him and his family,” is convinced Jūratė, who works in a prison for 12 years.
And if it seems that the situation regarding the size of the punishments or their appropriateness is not important for a normal society, it is a false impression, because when they are released, these people live among us.
Vytautas, a former prison system official, also talks about it, stating that the problem has many more layers than it may seem at first. He says that the prison fence does not fundamentally solve the problem.
So the question to ask is not how much, but how. This is a crucial question, because it determines which people get out of jail. What they give back to freedom.
Judge Audrius Cininas states that the announced decrease in the number of people incarcerated is probably due to the decrease in crime in Lithuania in general.
Read the first part, “Tom the prisoner and Linas in prison: about the prison system and the Soviet relics” (Part I)
Officer J.Danielė: “Everyone should have hope in freedom”
Jūratė Danielė – Specialist of the Department of Resocialization of the Pravieniškės Correctional Center – Open Colony. She has been working here for 12 years, so this prison is very familiar to the officer.
“I worked in security for seven years. He was on duty in the tower. There used to be a gun, standing on a tower, security perimeter. With that loaded gun, you’re out all day. Let it sit for three hours, then replace it, have an hour and a half rest. During that time you can accompany the transport, do other jobs.
Marius Vizbaras / 15min photo / Jūratė Danielė
The time came, years, I gave birth to my third child, I was on paternity leave for two years. Then I came back, I graduated.
I thought maybe I could do something more interesting in this office. But at that time, some officials were still the rest of the Soviet mindset. Everything seemed so gray to me. Gray Gray … The faces of the officers are gray, the faces of the convicts are gray. And such a void ”, recalled the interlocutor.
Jūratė, together with the prisoners, began to create green spaces and thanks to her, the gray walls of the prison were replaced by colored walls. At first, the convicts themselves were skeptical about the women’s activities, but a year later, the official’s initiative to create green spaces was supported by up to 130 convicts who wanted to work together.
New annual subscribers receive a Christmas tree as a gift!
Read
[ad_2]
