Speaking at the 94th anniversary of the Estonian prison service, Justice Minister Hanno Pevkur said that despite a drop in the number of prisoners in recent years too many people are behind bars in this country compared with other European countries.
The justice minister said that there are close to 3,300 inmates in Estonian prisons and that the number is too large. "A review of penal law, commissioned by the Ministry of Justice and supervised by University of Tartu professor Jaan Sootak, is nearing completion. Practice shows that just putting a person in prison is not necessarily the best solution. A suitable penal and correctional system must reduce recidivism which unfortunately still is too high in Estonia," Pevkur said.
"The commission will finish its work in the next few months and then we'll see what the academic community's vision of Estonia's present-day penal law is. I believe it will be sufficiently effective and security generating but not overcriminalized," the minister said. "One of the keywords of the penal law review is balance of punishments. I hope the solutions proposed by the commission will be shaped into a bill, move to parliament and from there into the Estonian legal system for it to be democratic and provide sufficient protection to people."
Pevkur also said that prison officials' social guarantees are not on a par with those of people working in other power-wielding agencies. "The prison service is in essence similar to service in the police and therefore the social guarantees to employees of power-wielding agencies that were under discussion in the government at the beginning of this year ought to extend to prison officials as well. I believe those discussions will win the parliament's approval and then we'll be able to offer additional security to prison officials."