The Helsinki
Committee's 6-year experience in prison monitoring shows that the prison system reform in
Serbia is much too slow-paced to answer pressing needs. Overall conditions in Serbia's
prisons are deplorable and, in many aspects, in stark opposition to both domestic
legislation and international standards. Though some improvements (mostly in terms of
facility reconstruction and in-service courses of training for prison staff) have been
registered since the Committee's initial tours in the period 2002-03, small progress was
made in the very concept of detention and the purpose of imprisonment. To gauge
reform-oriented changes in this concept made so far, the Committee opted for two primary
target groups: the persons deprived of their liberty, adults and juveniles - serving time
in the Leskovac District Prison and the Juvenile Penitentiary in Valjevo, including prison
officers and managements of these two penitentiaries, as well as relevant authorities.
The project's overall objective is to improve compliance with human
rights obligations and accountability of duty holders, whereas the short-term objective of
this 3-month monitoring and reporting program is to accelerate the progress towards the
objectives of prison reform and implementation of measures against torture and/or
degrading treatment in Serbian prisons (as laid down in CPT standards), notably against
juveniles.
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