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Council of Europe brings together Directors of Probation Services from member states

27 November 2008 18:20 (UTC +04:00)

Strasbourg. Fuad Gulubayli â€“ APA. Council of Europe has brought together Directors of Probation Services from member states today. APAâ€™s Europe bureau reports that Council of Europe has a recommendation on alternatives to imprisonment. The aim of the conference is to devise other means by which sentences may be served, provide an opportunity to reaffirm the need for a modern and humane criminal justice policy in Europe.

The conference was organised in co-operation with the French Ministry of Justice and the European Organisation for Probation. Khanlar Zeynalov, chief of Justice Ministryâ€™s Department of Execution of Court Decisions and Fakhraddin Isayev, chief of the Penitentiary Service Department of Special Issues represented Azerbaijan at the conference. Isayev told APAâ€™s correspondent in Strasbourg that the conference discusses means by which the persons committing less grave crimes can serve their sentence without being sent to prison or isolated from the society.

The meeting searches for the ways of spreading this practice. Since its admission to the Council of Europe, Azerbaijan has participated at the meetings of the organization contributing to the implementation of democratic reforms in all directions. CE experts have regularly visited the prisons in Azerbaijan over the past 7-8 years and they have expressed satisfaction with the reforms carried out in this field. Azerbaijan is one of the countries, which has implemented a great number of reforms in this sphere in CIS space.

The conclusions of the conference will contribute to the preparation of a new Council of Europe recommendation on probation services.