Minister of Justice of Armenia Rustam Badasyan today participated in the first meeting of the series of two-day discussions devoted to the draft of the new Penitentiary Code and organized by the German Foundation for International Legal Cooperation, as reported the Department of Information and Public Relations of the Ministry of Justice of Armenia.

The minister expressed his gratitude to the Federal Republic of Germany and particularly the German Foundation for International Legal Cooperation for their effective cooperation with the Ministry of Justice and for organizing the meeting.

The minister also stated that the implementation of reforms in the penitentiary and probation sectors is currently one of the government’s priorities.. In this stage of reforms, Minister Badasyan attached importance to the adoption of a new Penitentiary Code that will be in line with international standards, as well as the fruitful work that the task force in charge of developing the Code is doing in that direction.

Rustam Badasyan mentioned that the draft of the new Penitentiary Code contains new key solutions to many problems and stated that State Secretary of the Ministry of Justice of Lower Saxony, Dr. Stefan von der Beck helped a lot to earmark the solutions.

In his welcoming remarks, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Armenia Michael Banzhaf attached importance to the fruitful and longstanding cooperation with the Ministry of Justice of Armenia and stated that the adoption of the new Penitentiary Code would help the Republic of Armenia grow as a legal state.

During the meeting, the participants discussed several issues related to the goals of punishment, the principles of execution of punishment, the re-socialization of convicts and the main measures for that, judicial oversight over execution of punishment, short-term imprisonment and the conditions for serving of punishment.