Filenews 4 February 2021 - by Michalis Hatzivasilis
Electronic tagging surveillance will be considered as a stand-alone sentence and the courts will be able to enforce it, while the parties will also be able to remain at home instead of in the Central Prisons.
These radical measures were reached by the Ad Hoc Committee appointed last June by the Council of Ministers to study and submit a comprehensive proposal for a definitive solution to the long-term problem of overcrowding in the Central Prisons. The Commission has completed its sessions and the final study to be submitted to the Cabinet is now being written.
After analysing the long-term problem of overcrowding in prisons, the Commission will make a series of suggestions concerning alternative ways of serving the sentence in order to decongest prisons. In particular, non-serious misconduct will be recommended for alternative sentences to imprisonment, such as social work, with the Commission proposing to strengthen this institution.
It will also recommend that electronic home surveillance of persons be extended and legislation passed to be seen as a kind of punishment. In other words, the courts have the option of imposing, as an alternative to imprisonment, house arrest with an electronic wristband/ankleband. In addition, there is a suggestion that, as for the persons who are ordered to be detained until the start of their trial, there should be the possibility for the courts to give instructions that they remain confined to their home wearing an electronic wristband/ankleband. This will solve many problems since at the moment the entire wing in central prisons is filled with those awaiting trial.
Suggestions will also be made for foreigners sent to prison for minor offences or for illegal stay, while half the prison population is not Cypriots. The Commission is chaired by the Director of Prisons Anna Aristotle and involves former judges and officials of the Ministry of Justice and Prisons. It should be noted that if the proposals are accepted and implemented, then presidential favours will not have to be given.
The pandemic and fears of the spread of the virus in the Central Prisons, has made the measure of decongestion of the prison of Cyprus more urgent, since it is an enclosed area such as the Prisons and the spread of the virus is real. It is recalled that in order to decongest the Prisons, other measures were taken last year in the midst of the pandemic, such as the release of persons who could use electronic house arrest (arm), the inclusion in the institution of the Open Prison of a greater number of convicted persons, etc.
