YEREVAN. - The rejection of the applications to release life-term prisoners ahead of time is already turning into a practice instead of regularity.

Lawyer of the Armenian Helsinki Committee, Robert Revazyan, told the aforementioned to Armenian News – NEWS.am Monday.

According to him, Armenia has about 100 life-term prisoners, of which 20 have already passed the threshold of 20 years of imprisonment and have a right to apply for release ahead of time. However, none of the applications has so far been satisfied.

“Only one life-term prisoner was released during these years and on the ground of serious disease. He remained out of prison for only one week after which he died,” he said, recalling the case of Soghomon Kocharyan.

In the lawyer’s words, the institute of releasing life-term prisoners ahead of time has not yet developed in Armenia, the number of life-term prisoners being too large for the country. “A country like Slovenia, which has a 2 billion population, has about 20 [life-term] prisoners. U.S. has about several hundreds of [life-term] prisoners, but this issue is a little complicated there, since this country has a death penalty institute.”

Revazyan also attached importance to educating the prisoners in the penitentiary institution and preparing their entrance into the society so that they do not repeat their crime after being released.

“Many of those who committed crimes had troubled childhood: they had no parents, lived in bad families and finally in bad social conditions,” the lawyer said, noting that often these factors drive these people to crime, and thus exactly these issues should first be solved for having a healthy society.