RESOLUTION

RESOLUTION Resolution On the Reform of the System of Serving Sentences for Criminal Offenses The Baltic Assembly considering that the Baltic States system of penal institutions for serving a sentence of imprisonment to a great extent retains the features of the Soviet-type penal institutions, admitting the necessity to radically improve educational work and to ensure adherence to human rights in these institutions, considering that the system of serving sentences for criminal offenses should be placed under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice, recommends that the parliaments and the governments of the Baltic States, while implementing the reform of the system of serving sentences for criminal offenses: — increase the role of the court and the prosecutor’s office in exerting control over the execution of penalties for criminal offenses; — reconstruct the existing penal institutions, in the main providing a system of cells; — ensure that persons having committed severe crimes and persons serving sentences for repeated offenses are sequestrated from other convicted persons; — ensure that the convicted persons are engaged in socially useful work; — establish an employment and social rehabilitation system for persons released from penal institutions. Rîga, October 6, 1996