Prague, July 7 (CTK) – Thirty months after former president Vaclav Klaus declared amnesty shortly before his term expired in January 2013, Czech prisons are full again, daily Pravo writes Tuesday.
It writes that the number of prisoners dropped from 23,000 before the amnesty to 16,000 after it in the country of 10.5 million inhabitants, but now the prison capacity is again full at 98 percent, the paper writes.
It writes that there were more than 20,000 prisoners as from the end of last week, while another almost 3,000 convicts were waiting to start serving their sentences.
Pravo writes that the capacity has been exceeded in 15 out 35 prisons, in one by as much as one quarter.
A similar situation existed in 2012 already, when there were 23,500 inmates in the prisons with a total capacity of around 20,000 and another 5,000 prisoners were waiting for starting serving their prison sentences, Pravo writes.
The situation was solved by the transformation of offices, stores and social rooms in the prisons into cells, Pravo writes.
It writes that if the average increase in the number of prisoners of the past two years remained the same, the situation would repeat at the end of next year.
Hana Loeffelmannova, spokeswoman for the Prison Service, however, told Pravo that the pre-amnesty situation will return in 2017 only.
She said the Prison Service is considering several alternatives of raising the capacity of prisons, including the reconstruction of the buildings that are not destined for prisoners at present.
When the number of prisoners was culminating the last time, the former deputy justice minister, Daniel Volak, started negotiating with the Interior Ministry about the transfer of some complexes originally destined to accommodate refugees into prisons, Pravo writes.
It writes that one of them was the complex in Vysni Lhoty, north Moravia, that was to be rebuilt into a facility for 350 prisoners at a cost of 100 million crowns next year.
However, it was decided last week that the Vysni Lhoty complex will be used as a centre for refugees who are now flooding the south of Europe and whom the Czech Republic has pledged to accept, Pravo writes.
It writes that the refugee facility will have a capacity of around 250 people.
