Young juvenilesin ordinary Prisons

Children from 14 years, who commit serious crimes in Azerbaijan, are kept in special institutions under the country’s Justice Ministry. Upon reaching adulthood at 18 they are transferred to ordinary prisons. Journalist Lia Bayramova investigated this practice and looked at attempts to reform the system.

By Liya Bayramova

Posted on November 8th, 2009

There are 41 young prisoners at the so-called Educational Institution under the Justice Ministry serving sentences of up to 10 years. One of them is 16-year old Farid U, who serves six years for a drugs conviction. Upon reaching 18 he will be transferred to an adult prison - in the same way as 120 teenagers have been dispatched within just the last four years.

Last year teenagers committed some 4500 crimes in Azerbaijan. In roughly one in five cases a teenager is sent to a youth prison of which there are three in the country.

This system has largely escaped public debate, but there are some attempts at reforming the current set-up, for example by creating a separate institution for young offenders, where they can serve the remainder of a sentence for crimes committed at under-age.

Among projects designed to find new ways of dealing with adolescent crime is the Baku Children’s Legal Clinic, which deals with cases involving teenagers, including some 30 of a criminal nature every year. The decisions reached in this framework involve alternative ways of punishment, not traditional prison sentences.
The Azerbaijani government in cooperation with UNICEF and the OSCE Baku office are now working to create a system for improving juvenile justice in Azerbaijan so that it will meet international legal standards.  

The investigation was published in Russian in the daily “Zerkalo” daily and in Azerbaijani “Ayna” weekly on May 30th, 2009.

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