Reforms in the penitentiary system do not decrease recidivismcrime in Azerbaijan

Much is spoken  in Azerbaijan, at the official level about the reform and humanization of the state penitentiary system for the execution of criminal penalties. Especially a lot of information is published about reforms in places  detention of women ( jail N4) and juvenile offenders, where attention is paid to improving education and vocational training convicts. It is reported about the meetings of convicts with public organizations, with the provision of psychological, medical, even cosmetic help. According to official information,  new institutions are being repaired, built and put into operation, more convenient places for visiting convicts with relatives are being created.

The reforms also cover pre-trial detention centers of the Ministry of Justice, the website of the Ministry of Justice.  There are two large hospitals for convicts, one of these hospitals specializes in the treatment of convicts with lung diseases (tuberculosis,  and coronavirus infection). In the absence of the possibility of treatment in these clinics patients are transported under guard to republican hospitals.

In April 2022, Minister of Justice Fikret Mammadov stated that reforms in the penitentiary systems  of Azerbaijan are one of the key issues. He listed "reforms"

talking only about the construction of two new institutions for juveniles and women prisoners, as well as presidential pardons, as an indicator of the country's commitment to the ideas of humanism.

Senior officers of the Prison Service participate in meetings with foreign and international organizations, adopting the experience of reforms in developed countries.

On June 21-22, 2022 in Seville (Spain) the 27^th annual conference of directors of prisons and probation services organized by Council of Europe was held. Azerbaijan was represented at the conference by the Deputy Minister of Justice Jeyhun Hasanov, head of the Probation Service Agshin Ziyadov and head of the department of relations with Ministry of Public Affairs Mehman Sadigov.  The Reports on female labor in places of deprivation of liberty, reintegration of convicts with society, psychological health of convicts, design and infrastructure institutions of the penitentiary system were listened to.  Participants from Azerbaijan reported on reforms in our country, improvement of legislation, adoption of new regulations, construction of new, relevant international level of penitentiary institutions.

In 2010, report on the implementation of a two-year project to support the reform of the penitentiary system in Azerbaijan was listened to at the  conference.  The project was implemented under the patronage of the Council of Europe with the financial assistance of the Government of Norway. Trainings for the staff of penitentiary institutions were conducted, the conditions of detention of convicts and  their medical care was improved. Many penitentiary institutions have been overhauled, a group of psychologists was created in this system, window openings  in the cells were enlarged,  indoor ventilation and natural lighting were improved;  

diet of convicts was also improved, and they have  more opportunities for telephone conversations, meetings with relatives and receiving parcels, steps were taken for the social adaptation of persons released from places of detention. With the assistance of international humanitarian organizations in these institutions regularly take preventive measures to prevent the spread of tuberculosis. From the same period began creation of the Probation Service - a system of punishment in the form of restriction of liberty within the convict's home, with electronic tracking of its movements.

Another Azerbaijani reality with a high recurrence of crime

In parallel with information about the constantly improving situation in all areas of the penitentiary system of Azerbaijan, there is another world of real life beyond  barbed wire. Turan receives phone calls and letters from relatives, family members of convicts, and from citizens who are in places of detention, as well as released. None of these submissions contains positive information. Those who have experienced the horrors of imprisonment report beatings of prisoners, poor nutrition, overcrowding in cells, bribery of all staff, prisons, lack of drinking water in summer, and cold rooms in winter.

However, it is impossible not to notice that the Azerbaijani Penitentiary Service does not fulfill its mission - to reduce the level of recidivism (committing repeated crimes by previously convicted). Apparently, therefore, there is no information on the statistics of relapse in official documents. Law enforcement agencies do not issue comparative data over the years in order to track the dynamics of crime in the country, in particular for repeat offenders. We only know that the number of prisoners in Azerbaijan fluctuates between 20,000 and 23,000 people.

According to the coordinator of the Public Council under the Ministry of Justice, human rights activist Saadat Bananyarly, the recidivism rate in Azerbaijan is 50%.

In an interview for Turan, the director of the Azerbaijani Human Rights Center, Eldar Zeynalov, named a higher figure. According to him, about 60% of convicts after their release are again  in prisons.

According to him, ten years ago the situation with the recidivism of crimes was similar, in general, nothing has changed. "Earlier, officials called a figure of 65%. This figure has never been disputed. In Soviet times, this figure was 30%. Zeynalov believes that only one third of convicts are re-educated during their imprisonment.

In different countries, the concept of recidivism hides a different understanding of this term: re-criminal prosecution, re-sentencing or re-imprisonment, for a one-, two- or five-year period after release. Somewhere in the statistics they include the return of a convicted person to prison for violating the conditions of parole, somewhere not. For example, depending on the metrics used, recidivism in Norway can range from 14% to 42%. In 2010, the UK Department of Justice attempted to compare recidivism in England and Wales, Scotland and the Netherlands and came up with the following figures: 45.1%, 44.3% and 38% of those released, respectively, received a second sentence during the year. In Latvia, the recidivism of those who served sentences in the summer of 2009 by November 2011 amounted to: among those serving a prison sentence - 51%, among those who received parole - 26%, among those who received a suspended sentence - 16%, writes Olga Shepeleva from the Center for Strategic Research (RF) in an article.

In her report "Deprivation of liberty and recidivism: foreign experience", Caroline Didi analyzed the resocialization and rehabilitation programs implemented in Germany, the Netherlands and Norway from the point of view of recidivism prevention. The data show that the rate of recidivism in groups that participated in individual programs is decreasing. That is, the content of each specific program plays a key role, so their design must be approached very carefully.

Successful programs deal with the following risk factors that are highly likely to lead to recidivism on the part of ex-prisoners: illiteracy, lack of general school education, lack of any professional skills for successful employment, lack of experience in legal employment; pre-imprisonment or post-release failures in employment; lack of housing or permanent residence; early involvement in criminal activity, lack of experience in a law-abiding life; experience of social exclusion and violence, including family violence; drug addiction, alcoholism, substance abuse; mental health problems.

“In Azerbaijan, most repeat offenders are placed in correctional institution number eight, in the suburbs of Baku. Basically, they are caught on thefts, robberies, fraud and drug trafficking,” said Eldar Zeynalov.

He criticizes the effectiveness of the penitentiary reform in Azerbaijan: “We need a change in the approach to prisons, which today do not heal, but cripple. The recurrence of crimes is now twice as high as in Soviet times. But the conditions content has improved, and many offenses of the Soviet Criminal Code decriminalized."

Labor in prison as a way to correct criminals

In order to understand why the humanization of prisons so far gives a negative result, you need to look at the list of basic means of correction convicts (Article 8.2 of the Code for the Execution of Punishments (CEP)). There are six of them: order execution and serving a sentence (regime); educational work; public useful work; general education; vocational education and professional training; public impact.

There is almost no socially useful work in them. It means not working on economic maintenance of the prisons themselves, and the production of demand in country of production. In the women's jail work clothes are sewn and carpets are woven, at 2-3 other  jails make trellises for grapes, bunks for soldiers' barracks,

school desks or make iron gates. This is minuscule compared to the number of imprisonment in Azerbaijan. Industrial zones of the  jails  empty, many of them have been  turned into residential areas, in others there are a couple of machines, and it no longer an obligation, but a privilege to work on them, since the mention "conscious attitude to work" opens the way to early release. Meanwhile, CEP has dozens of articles that regulate labor relations, including ensuring a decent salary and accrual of pension experience. The opportunity to earn honestly supports the self-esteem of a person who  is in custody, allows to give a gift to a child for a day birth. Without the possibility of labor, the prisoner is not even able to buy himself cigarettes and inevitably turns into a social dependent.

The order of the head of state of February 10, 2017 prescribes: “In order to involvement of persons deprived of liberty in socially useful work the possibility of restoring existing production sites and creating new sites in penitentiary institutions, to take measures to stimulating the participation of entrepreneurs in this activity”.

More than five years have passed,  three of them when there was no pandemic, no war. But nothing was done. Similarly, ten years (2007- 2017) sabotaged the law on the social adaptation of released prisoners, which, among other things, included providing these people with housing and work.

“For me, there is sabotage by the perpetrators,” Zeynalov said. Zeynalov asked one of the chiefs of the jails, what is his task as  the head of this institution, replied: “My jail is a storage room; they hand  me over the convict, and at the end of the term I must return him alive and healthy. Such minimalist approach does not need prisoner labor at all and turns a prisoner in a thing, like a ram in a herd. And how can the "shepherd" hold on here, so as not to milk and not cut the wards?

Since prisoners bring shadow income, it is natural that unscrupulous employees will be interested in the greater number of prisoners and in preserving blessed prohibitions for our time. The labor of prisoners makes it in a significant degree independent of the family, improves personal characteristics (and it means that it makes it possible to free itself ahead of schedule), and thereby many corruption schemes.

One must also abandon the perception of the labor of prisoners only as industrial (type sewing of mittens and the production of crosses) and provide for the possibility of using prisoners from rural areas in the agrarian-industrial sphere (farm, etc.). It  would not only maintain a person’s connection with agriculture, but also, between otherwise, it would help to introduce him to the advanced methods of rural labor, which would be useful at large. Creation of state -owned enterprises with the participation of labor of prisoners solves the problem of those spheres of agriculture, which peasants do not want to engage in, preferring resale goods.

Integration of prisoners into society before and after release

Another aspect that complicates the relationship of the prisoner with the family is remoteness of the house from the jail in which prisoners serve their term. I do not mean even the problems caused by the pandemic. But, imagine that a woman from Kazakh serves her term on a general regime in the only jail for women in Baku. By law,  relatives have a right to visit  her every week, but for this  they need to go through the whole country.

As a result,  relatives of the most of the female prisoners  in jail No. 4 cannot visit them. The  Gobustan prison, jail No. 3 for tuberculosis patients, jail No. 8 for especially dangerous recidivists,  jail No. 9 for former law enforcement officers - the only ones in the whole Azerbaijan are in the same position.

The position of remoteness is gradually being corrected. Penitentiary complexes appeared in Nakhichevan and Sheki, which serve several surrounding areas and include both a pre-trial detention center and a mixed-regime jail (general and strict). Next in line is the creation of similar complexes in Ganja and Lankaran, in some other rural areas. But the process needs to be accelerated.

The creation of new inter-district prisons would also help  to improve conditions.  In addition to the remoteness from home and the rare reception of dates and parcels, current jails built in Soviet times and according to Soviet  standards, do not meet not European,  and the current national standards (2.5-3 sq. m versus European 6-7 sq. m and national 4-5 sq. m). The recent transfer of  jail  No. 4 from the densely populated area of ​​ Black City  to the suburban village of Zabrat  was welcomed.

But only the improvement of conditions of detention is not enough to  re-educate a person or extinguish the criminal inclinations. Severity of punishment (including intolerant conditions of detention) can only embitter a person, but not re-educate.

Without involving prisoners in socially useful work, they naturally morally degrade, and society looks at them as its dependents. The penitentiary system retains numerous loopholes for corruption. The penitentiary reform should solve this main problem, said Zeynalov.

How to live in freedom? Some choose prison again

When the prisoner is released, he faces a number of problems that awaited him all his term. Unemployed, he must pay a civil claim to the victims. He again returns to the need to support his family. Or, having lost his family, or even his house, during his time in prison, he must look for a  place to live in.  Employers do not need the released citizen, he has lost his labor skills, and maybe his pre-prison profession is already outdated and no one needs it. In this scenario,  the released person  believes that  the most  convenient  way is return to where he is fed three times a day, dressed and treated. For the disabled and the elderly, going to prison, where there is order and protection from lawlessness, seems better than freedom. This is how “social prisoners” appear, human rights activist Eldar Zeynalov continued the topic.

On May 5, 2007, after many recommendations from the Council of Europe and a campaign by human rights activists, the law "On the social adaptation of persons released from punishment in penitentiary institutions" was adopted. It spells out the need to create "a system of legal, economic, organizational and socio-psychological measures carried out in order to adapt persons released from serving sentences in penitentiary institutions to the social environment, protect their rights, freedoms and legitimate interests, prevent new crimes that may be committed by these persons, and criminogenic factors capable of influencing them.

Responsibility for "social adaptation"  is placed on a number of government agencies, in particular, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Population.

The adoption of the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers of October 17, 2017 on the establishment of the Center for Social Adaptation under the Ministry of Labor took another 10 years; another 1.5 years were spent to agree on a 1-page decision on approving the structure of the Center for Social Adaptation in the Gobustan region under the State Social Protection Fund. There was clearly no hurry to create conditions for former prisoners so that they could return to society with a minimum of bureaucratic problems.

What does the system of social adaptation, created by such a long way, offer today? The adaptation process starts even before release from prison. Since one of the principles of adaptation is its voluntariness, data on prisoners who may need it are collected gradually. The administration of the prison  or detention center finds out which of the prisoners does not have a permanent living space, needs vocational education, work, medical and social assistance, who needs various documents. Such prisoners are registered, and their rights and freedoms and the essence of social adaptation are explained to them.

By the time of release, prisoners are provided with the necessary documents, they are given a certain amount of money, and if they need temporary housing, they are sent to the Center for Social Adaptation, where they are provided with legal, psychological and information assistance, given directions for study and treatment, and are registered as unemployed. .

Those former prisoners who initially believed that they did not need social adaptation and did not register in a penitentiary institution, as well as citizens who returned to Azerbaijan after being released from prisons of foreign states, can register and join the adaptation process within three months.

It is believed that one year is enough for social adaptation. But in exceptional cases, this period may be extended for another year. Judging by official reports, the only social adaptation center serves 50 former prisoners at a time.

Is it a lot? And is enough attention paid to released prisoners?

Most ex-prisoners do not require temporary housing. Nevertheless, judging by the socio-demographic indicators for 2021, then 61% of criminals (12,936 out of a total of 21,206) were not studying or working at the time they committed the crime. Half of them have already been condemned before, and this is not 50 people, but two orders of magnitude more. It is possible that if the state took into account that former prisoners are a risk group and proactively offered them a job, there would be fewer crimes. Therefore, there should be much more such centers of social adaptation,  says E. Zeynalov.

Progressive world experience in preventing relapses of crime

The European Prison Rules contain a number of rules on the post-penitentiary adaptation of convicts. Part  1 of  the Article 107 of the Rules states that in advance of the release of convicts, they should be assisted in the form of procedures and special programs that ensure the transition from science in a penitentiary institution to law-abiding science in society. The rules define the way to achieve this goal - the development of a program of activities prior to release under supervision, combined with effective social support

In penitentiary institutions in Finland, employees involved in the prevention of post-penitentiary crimes are required to have business contacts with the welfare and employment authorities of local municipalities and other state and non-state institutions. An important component of this activity is the preservation for the period of serving a sentence or obtaining again places to live after release. The social worker, together with the employment authorities, is obliged to find a place for training or work, as well as to assist in resolving issues related to the communication of the convict with the family.

There are "open" departments in German prisons. They exist for persons sentenced to a relatively short term of imprisonment for minor crimes. Others are transferred to these units from regular prisons a year before they are released. Convicts in such departments wear their own clothes and can communicate by phone with relatives and friends. They go to work on their own and come back in the evening, live in rooms for three or four people. One day a week they have the right to live with a family. Persons released from places of detention, if necessary, are assisted in employment by social workers of the Ministry of Justice.

A third of  earnings are withheld from the convict during the entire period of his stay in prison, until sufficient  amount is accumulated so that in the first months after his release, he can support himself and his family.

In order to solve the problems of employment and adaptation of convicts after release, the administration itself establishes contacts with various employers who are interested in using the labor of these workers. This not only improves the adaptation of the released, but also contributes to the preservation of their existing labor skills and the acquisition of new ones. The penitentiary is also charged with establishing and maintaining contact with family and other relatives of convicts, especially in the period close to when they should be released and receive freedom.

In the UK, all prisoners serving more than a year and all juveniles after release are subject to supervision, which depends on the length of the sentence. In the UK, correctional facilities and the probation service are separate entities. The successful adaptation of prisoners after release depends on the degree of cooperation between these two services. Here the problem is solved: to connect the period before release from punishment with the first period after release.

Conclusion

Reducing the rate of recidivism in Azerbaijan under the conditions of the existing penitentiary system and post-prison adaptation is virtually impossible. It must be realized that a penitentiary institution is not so much an instrument of punishment as a system of re-education, changing the thinking, behavior of the convict. If recidivism does not decrease, according to experts, if the statistics are hidden by responsible state services, then this indicates the presence of a problem that is not being solved, but is being retouched, which creates fertile ground for the growth of crime and especially recidivism.

The situation requires a revision of the policy of the punishment system in the direction of the system of re-education. This requires an in-depth analysis of the situation, the adoption of a roadmap for reforming the penitentiary sector and the rehabilitation system by creating a single chain of all structures and services involved in the crime reduction policy.