MOSCOW—Russian lawmakers on Tuesday gave first-round approval to a bill that strengthens punishments for pedophilia, including imposing mandatory chemical castration or life sentences in cases that involve repeated offenses.

The lower house, or State Duma, unanimously passed President Dmitry Medvedev’s bill in the first of three required readings. The bill also needs approval by the upper house and Medvedev’s signature. Report by BostonGlobe.com.

It imposes chemical castration for sexual crimes against minors younger than 14 by those with a previous pedophilia conviction. The procedure of chemical castration involves the administration of testosterone-suppressing hormones intended to curb sexual drive.

In Europe, Britain, Denmark and Sweden offer chemical castration drugs to sex offenders to control sexual urges on a voluntary basis. In the United States, several states including Louisiana, California, Oregon and Arizona have laws allowing chemical castration.

The law also envisages a life sentence for repeated offenders. Existing law allows for a sentence of 20 years for second-time offenders.

It bill also said that convicted pedophiles can be released on parole only after serving four-fifths of their sentence — or apply for an earlier release only after volunteering for a chemical castration. Under existing law, convicts can apply for a release on parole after serving two-thirds of their sentence.

A lawmaker with the ruling United Russia party said the law follows an increase in the number of crimes against minors.

“In the past 10 years the number of pedophiles in our country rose three- or fourfold,” Tatyana Yakovleva told the Interfax news agency.

In 2010, almost 7,600 people have been convicted for sexual crimes against persons below 16, according to Internal Affairs Ministry statistics

Tammy Russia, Sex Offenders

Electronic tagging of criminals and a serious offenders’ register will be in place in Malta by the end of the year when a law regulating these matters should be finalised, according to the Times of Malta.

Justice and Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici said… the ministry had worked on the groundwork for the introduction of electronic tagging. It would apply to those out on bail awaiting judgement as well as to keep track of prison inmates’ whereabouts. It would also benefit foreign people charged in Malta who might not otherwise be granted bail for fear they might abscond.  The tagging, which may be in the form of a bracelet, could also apply to inmates granted parole, one of the main proposals in the White Paper on Restorative Justice that was presented earlier this year.

The serious offenders’ list would include a paedophile register and would aim to protect people from perpetrators and keep track of those who were convicted of serious crimes, a ministry spokesman elaborated.  The type of “serious crime” to make the register would be determined by the severity of the punishment. However, the details were still being worked out.

vericatrajkova Electronic Monitoring, Europe, INTERNATIONAL, Malta, Sex Offenders

UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw has ditched plans for three giant ‘Titan’ prisons costing £1.2 billion as the Government spending squeeze begins to bite.

Advanced proposals to build three, four-storey, 2,500 place jails will be dropped next week in a major U-turn.   Mr Straw will tell Parliament he has opted instead to build five smaller prisons, each holding 1,500 inmates – as many as the largest existing prisons in England and Wales.

Ministry of Justice sources said the decision was made in response to local opposition and criticism from penal reform groups and were not linked to funding. But the Tories said Mr Straw was responding to a £400 million “black hole” in prison finances.

A consultation paper on prison expansion published in June last year said each Titan would be housed on a giant 50-acre site and hold a cluster of smaller units holding around 500 inmates.   Planned locations were near the country’s major population centres in London, the West Midlands and the North West. New prison places are needed to fill a predicted 13,600 shortfall by 2014. The prison population crisis has meant that since June 2007, 52,117 criminals have been let out up to 18 days early.

vericatrajkova Economic Issues, England & Wales, Europe, INTERNATIONAL, Prison and Jail Construction, United Kingdom

In Wales, the union Napo fears that more than 200 jobs will be lost over the next two years, leaving already hard-pressed probation officers with far too heavy a case load to monitor offenders properly.  Report from WalesOnline.

Budget plans agreed by the Ministry of Justice and its agency Noms (National Offender Management Service), which is responsible for both the prison and probation services, will see cash cuts in all four regions.  In Gwent, for example, the overall budget is due to reduce from £22.8m in the financial year that began last week to £20m in two years’ time.

Mike Dunne, co-chair of the Gwent and Glamorgan branch of Napo, said: “We are extremely concerned about the potential impact of these cuts on our members’ ability to do their jobs properly. There is evidence that increasing workloads for probation officers results in an increase in crime. Coupled with the recession, which in itself is likely to result in more crime, there could be very serious consequences. The public will undoubtedly be at greater risk …

Mr Dunne said that Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, had stated that the public sector, like the private sector, should expect job losses in the recession.  “That’s all very well,” said Mr Dunne. “But whereas when car sales go down and demand decreases, there isn’t the need to employ so many workers in car factories, the same does not apply in the probation service. We still have the same number of clients to deal with, probably more” …

Justice Minister David Hanson, the MP for Delyn, said: “There is absolutely no evidence in the figures cited by Napo relating to the number of new crimes that would be committed and suggestions that there will be a 25% reduction in supervision are totally unsubstantiated.  “There has been a 70% increase in probation funding in real terms over the last 10 years and an increase of more than a third in staff.   “Re-offending rates are down, successful drug treatments and offending behaviour programmes are up, and the target for Community Payback is being exceeded.   “The Government will not do anything to endanger these successes in the future.  “Public protection is the main priority for the probation service and it will not be put at risk.”

vericatrajkova Community Corrections, Economic Issues, England & Wales, Europe, INTERNATIONAL, United Kingdom

Plans to build three Titan prisons to hold 7,500 inmates should be scrapped and replaced with a network of smaller “academy” prisons, according to former Tory cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken.  The Guardian reports.

The report, Locked up Potential, from a prison reform working group chaired by Aitken, who served an 18-month sentence for perjury, says in future prisons have to move to a radically different, more purposeful design to end the human warehousing now endemic in a £5bn a year and failing prison system.   “At the worm’s eye level I observed the pressures prison managements and staff have to face,” said Aitken. “On the whole they coped decently, but inadequately, with a daily chaos of chronic overcrowding, endemic drug abuse, widespread mental illness, and volatile mood swings.”   He said it was hardly surprising prison officers had to concentrate on containment and warehousing because, under the present overloaded system, the rehabilitation of offenders was “a political myth belied by the facts and figures”.

The report for Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice says the jails in England and Wales have become “conveyor belts carrying the same repeat offenders in and out of custody over and over again”.   Aitken’s report says the national offender management service [NOMS] has been a failure and should be abolished. In its place should be a network of community prison and rehabilitation trusts – similar to local National Health trusts. These new trusts should oversee a network of smaller community prisons for offenders, paid for by scrapping the £2.3bn Titan prisons project.

vericatrajkova England & Wales, Europe, INTERNATIONAL

Drugs are seized in Scottish jails almost five times a day on average, according to official figures.  This report from the BBC.

There were 2,122 cases of drugs being discovered in prisons from January 2008 to March 2009.   Scottish Conservative leader Annabel Goldie said the problem had doubled in five years, with jails now “awash” with drugs.  The Scottish Government said it had a “zero tolerance” attitude to drug use and was working to limit supply …

Ms Goldie said: “It is nothing short of incredible that the number of drug finds in our prisons has more than doubled in less than five years.  In 2003 there was an average of 2.3 drug finds per day. For the past few years that figure has more than doubled. It is unacceptable and it appears that Scotland’s prisons are now awash with drugs.”  The Conservatives have called for every prison to have a drug-free wing where inmates can go to when they want to come off drugs.  “We should be helping prisoners get off drugs, rather than providing an environment for drugs to flourish,” Miss Goldie said.

vericatrajkova Europe, INTERNATIONAL, Juvenile Justice, Scotland, United Kingdom

The Irish Times has published an editorial on the Irish prison system.  Excerpts follow:

The Irish prison system is a monument to long years of administrative and government failures. The extent of the problem finds echoes in refusals by the Department of Justice and the Minister’s office to meet and provide information to their own visiting committee at Mountjoy Jail. The latest report from that body identifies an emerging gang culture, drug taking, overcrowding and a lack of rehabilitation facilities as serious problems. In view of the economic downturn and the sentencing practices of judges, the situation can only get worse …

[P]risons and the way they function have come to reflect the needs of the service suppliers, rather than the welfare of clients. In that context, an overcrowded prison system provides justification for a new building programme, for overtime and for high numbers of staff …

For the past 10 years, Fine Gael has been harassing the Government to introduce legislation that would keep people out of jail for the non-payment of fines or debts. Instead, money would be deducted from pay or social welfare incomes. That would free-up some 2,000 prison places a year.  In the same way, prison chaplains have complained that the system is being used as a dumping ground for individuals with psychiatric illnesses. The Norwegian system, involving “composite” judicial orders concerning probationary and community services, linked to counselling and periods of electronic tagging, could halve the number of future inmates …

We need to break from the failed policies of the past. How many more reports, setting out the dysfunctional nature of the prison system, will be required before a programme of offender rehabilitation is adopted in preference to the crude one of incarceration?
It is facile to represent such change as being “soft on crime”, but that will not stop some vested interests from doing so. We cannot afford to persevere with a “lock-em-up and throw away the key” mentality. That has led to failure.

vericatrajkova Europe, INTERNATIONAL, Ireland

Norway and other European parties are working in Azerbaijan to improve conditions in the prison service.  Report from Trend News.

The Support Prison Reforms in Azerbaijan in 2008-2009 project is underway to conform the Azerbaijani penitentiary system to European standards as part of a cooperation program between the Justice Ministry and Council of Europe.

A workshop was recently held with the participation of penal employees on March 9-10, the project management told Trend News on March 10.   The workshop studied international documents to protect prisoner rights, Council of Europe employment regulations for prisons and the second and third articles of the European Human Rights Convention. The workshop focused on discussing European Prison Rules.

The project will finish in February 2010.  The project is financed by the Norwegian government and aims to bring the Azerbaijani penitentiary system in line with Council of Europe recommendations.

vericatrajkova Europe, INTERNATIONAL

Probation staff will struggle to stop criminals committing more crimes because of £3m worth of cuts, an English Member of Parliament warned last night.  Report from the Witney Gazette.

Thames Valley Probation Service is having to make the cuts over the next three years following a reduction in its budget from the Government. Four offices, including two in Oxford, may be shut under a review.   It is also feared up to 140 staff may lose their jobs and Banbury MP Tony Baldry said it would mean the probation service would struggle to monitor the 8,000 people a year it currently deals with …

Mr Baldry said he understood staff from closed offices might be relocated to a central base in Botley Road, Oxford, meaning they would have less time to monitor criminals outside the city. Mr Baldry said: “It will not be an improved service. “The whole point of local offender management is to have knowledge of the offender, local circumstances and their family.  Removing offices and staff is a retrograde step. It’s going to mean probation officers will spend all their time driving round the county. It will clearly damage offender management” …

Justice Minister David Hanson MP said: “Public protection is the main priority of the probation service and it will not be put at risk – offenders who pose the highest risk receive more intensive contact, with other resources being directed accordingly.”

vericatrajkova Community Corrections, Economic Issues, England & Wales, Europe, INTERNATIONAL, United Kingdom

The credibility of community sentences in the UK is at stake because offenders who breach the orders are not dealt with firmly enough, a study says.

Experts from King’s College London examined Community Orders and Suspended Sentence Orders, which were introduced in England and Wales four years ago.  They require offenders to do unpaid work or undergo rehabilitation.  But a probation officer interviewed for the study said those under the orders left court “laughing their heads off”.   Offenders who were interviewed said they felt “relieved” when they were given an order instead of a jail sentence …

One probation officer said breaches were not dealt with seriously enough and “that gives completely the wrong message.  “You go to court for a breach and you don’t get sent to prison, you go back on the van next week and all your mates tell everybody else about it. It doesn’t have the deterrent effect that it’s meant to have.”   The most commonly suggested improvement to SSOs was that offenders who breached them should be sent to prison.  One officer said: “I know prisons are full, but they’re full with the wrong people. We need to send out the message that if you’ve got a suspended sentence and you breach it, you go to prison.”

The BBC report has a lot more detailed information.

vericatrajkova Community Corrections, England & Wales, Europe, INTERNATIONAL, Sentencing, United Kingdom