The people of Greece just held massive protests in order to pressure the government to reform Greek prisons. Prisoners participated in a hunger strike and non-prisoners expressed their solidarity through marches, concerts, and other means.
The Greek government has just given into the prisoners' demands. Take a look at what the prisoners won! (Source-libcom.org)
1) All persons convicted to a sentence up to five years for any offense including drug related crimes can tranform their sentence into a monetary penalty. This will not be allowed in the case the jury decides that the payment is not enough to deter the convict from commiting punishable acts in the future.
2) The minimum sum for tranforming one day of prison sentence to monetary penanlty is reduced from 10 euros to 3, with the provision of being reduced to 1 euro by decision of the jury.
3) All people who have served 1/5 of their prison sentence for 2 year sentences and 1/3 for sentences longer than 2 years are to be released, with no exceptions.
4) The minimum limit of served sentence is reduced to 3/5 for conditional release and for convicts for drug related crimes. Those condemned under conditions of law Ν. 3459/2006 (articles 23 και 23Α) are excepmpted.
5) The maximum limit of pre-trial impironment is reduced from 18 to 12 months, with the excemption of crimes puniched by liife or 20year sentence.
6) The annual time of days-off prison is increased by one day. Tougher conditions for days-off are limited for those convicted for drug related crimes under Ν. 3459/2006.
7) Disciplinary penalties are to be integrated.
8) Integration after 4 years into national law of the European Council decision of drug trafficking (2004/757).
9) Expansion of implementation of conditional release of convicts suffering from AIDS, kidney failure, persistent TB, and tetraplegics.
What the Ministry failed to answer with regard to the prisoners' demands include:
1) Monetary exchange of prison sentences longer than 5 years, especially for 6.700 prisoners presently convicted for non-criminal offenses.
2) Abolition of juvenile prisons
3) Abolition of accumulative disciplinary penalties
4) Abolition of 18 months pre-trial imprisonment for a large number of offenses.
5) Satisfactory expansion of days off, despite the fact that the application of present liberties has been tested as succesfull during the last 18 years.
6) Immediate improvement of relocation conditions of convicts
7) Holding a meeting between the minister of justice and the prisoners' committee
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2 comments:
What exactly was wrong with the Greek prisons?
I don't know a lot about Greek prisoners, but I think a prominent complaint among Greeks regarding the criminal justice system is that Greek Drug laws are remarkably harsh and unfair
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