Hundreds of penitentiary employees to make facilities their home for coronavirus prevention
Hundreds of detention facility employees have volunteered for the initiative. Photo via Special Penitentiary Service of Georgia.
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Nearly 800 employees in penitentiary facilities in Georgia will stay at their workplace after their shifts over the following weeks to ensure safety of inmates during the new coronavirus outbreak.
In a move announced by Minister of Justice of Georgia Thea Tsulukiani on Monday, 780 staff in detention facilities will spend their off-work hours in specially created spaces at the sites.
Tsulukiani said the decision had been made to ensure both the ministry and prisoners felt confident the virus could not be "brought into" the prisons following possible outside contact by the employees.
The minister also said the new spaces for residence had been prepared and equipped in space of only two days.
In her announcement Tsulukiani thanked the volunteering staff for taking up the new conditions and said the ministry would provide free meals as well as financial compensation for the circumstances.
The Ministry of Justice has announced that the country’s penitentiary system will no longer be staffed with military conscripts.
A prisoners employment project has been launched at Gldani prison and inmates planted three species of raspberry and sowed beans at a land plot especially allocated for the work.
According to Minister of Corrections Kakha Kakhishvili, Stavros Lambrinidis has recommended to present Georgian achievements in the penitentiary system within the General Debate framework of the UN General Assembly 73rd session since "It would Provide the international community with information on how to implement successful reform in a short period of time.”
Inmates serving prison sentences in Georgia's correctional facilities are being given a range of paid work opportunities in a new initiative by the Ministry of Corrections of Georgia.
Georgia has handed over 101 Iranian prisoners who were serving their time in the country over to Iran as part of a repatriation effort amid the coronavirus pandemic.