On the 13th of December the public discussion of the draft of “National Strategy on Human Rights Defense” took place at the National Assembly. The discussion was organized by National Assembly and the RA National Security Council with the support of EU Advisory Group in Armenia.

“It is important for us to have public discussion of this draft project”, said the Secretary of the RA National Security Council Arthur Baghdasaryan inviting all those interested in the project to present their written suggestions to the working group by the 15th of January. According to Baghdasaryan, at the end of January the “National Strategy on Human Rights Defense” will be discussed at the RA National Security Council, after which it will be presented to the president for approval.

The president of Civil Society Institute NGO Arman Danielyan suggested changes in three areas – restrict the pre-trial detention period in the trial stage, make the conditional release system during the sentence definite and predictable, create juvenile justice system. Arman Danielyan explained to www.hra.am that during the trial the culprit is under arrest for undefined period until another decision is made by the court.

Before sending the case to the court in its pre-trial stage, the maximum period of detention is 2 years. This means the court should review the decision of the arrest every two months and make a new decision on extending, ending or changing the detention. “We suggest that the same mechanism worked for the trial phase”, says Arman Danielyan.

Another problem according to the defender is that today there are no concrete criteria for the system of conditional release during the sentence and this raises dissatisfaction of all the parties dealing with this system.

“Such situation results in overcrowded penitentiaries. For solving this problem amnesty is exercised during which the convicts are released and no study is carried out for revealing the risks of their inclination to committing another crime”, stresses the president of CSI NGO.

He suggests to create definite and predictable system, which means the decision of the conditional release should be predictable for the convict, and the issues of conditional release should be studies by specialized judges, who will correctly estimate the risks of repetition of crimes.

Another suggestion of the NGO is the creation of probation system, which should work for both conditionally released and conditionally not convicted which will allow them to return to normal lifestyle.

The suggestion of creation of juvenile justice system according to Arman Danielyan envisages the presence of specialized judges or courts for juvenile offenders’ cases.

Also there should be diversion, which means there should be guidance from criminal justice system to rehabilitation system, which is more humanistic approach and allows to correct the behavior of juvenile offender without court system.

“The pilot model of this system already exists in Armenia. Eight rehabilitation centers are opened with the efforts of NGO, the works of which are more satisfactory, according to us. It is necessary for the government to accept it as an acting model and start financing of these centers and also create new rehabilitation centers for making this service available in all regions”, said the president of CSI NGO Arman Danielyan.

Mary Alexanyan

Source: www.hra.am