OSCE helps Serbia to strengthen prison security for high-risk offenders
In 2003, the OSCE Mission to Serbia began working on a project to create a more secure prison environment to prevent organized crime leaders from directing criminal operations in the outside world from their prison cells.
Experts from the Mission helped a working group from the Serbian Ministry of Justice to draft the Law on Enforcement of Prison Sentences for Organized Crime Offences. Widely known as the Special Imprisonment Regime Law, it was approved by the Serbian Parliament in August 2009.
Strict prison regime under the new law
"Under this law," explains Damir Joka, prison administration official at the Ministry of Justice, "offenders sentenced for organized crimes, war crimes, and terrorism will serve their sentences under a special regime in a newly built special unit in the correctional facility located in Pozarevac."
The prisoners will be alone in their cells, their contact with other prisoners restricted and their communication with the outside world very limited and highly controlled. For example, they will only be allowed to write to their immediate family, unless they receive court permission to contact someone else. They will be able to use the telephone maximally twice a month and all their visits will be audio and video recorded.
The Special Imprisonment Regime Law originates from provisions contained in the 2003 Law on Organization and Jurisdiction of Government Agencies in Suppressing Organized Crime, which state that those accused for organized crime need to be separated from other detainees while in detention. In countries that do not have a special imprisonment regime, organized crime leaders are able to give orders to the members of their organizations by simply using a smuggled mobile phone or by asking their visitors to deliver messages to the outside world.
Co-operation with the Italian Ministry of Justice
Mindful of the success attained in this field by the Italian Ministry of Justice, which has had a special imprisonment regime in place since 1992, the Mission requested the support of the Italian Ministry's prison administration for developing the new Serbian law. Over a period of five years, the Mission worked very closely with the Italian and Serbian Ministries of Justice to prepare the ground for the new legislation. The Italian experience, shared by Sebastiano Ardita, head of the Italian directorate for the treatment of prisoners, during two visits to Serbia, was taken as a model to develop a similar set of norms.
From the outset, special attention was given to the need to devise norms that, while restricting individual freedoms, would, as Ardita puts is, "in no case involve the violation of minimum standards in the field of fundamental and inalienable human rights."
To prepare Serbian judges, prosecutors and prison administration officials for the law, the OSCE Mission to Serbia organized study visits to Italy, where they were able to see how their Italian counterparts are implementing the special regime.
In 2007, a special unit secure enough to house the most dangerous organized crime leaders was built within the correctional facility in Pozarevac, the only maximum security prison in Serbia. The unit was modelled on the Italian maximum security prison Rebibbia, which houses some of the most notorious Italian organized crime ringleaders. The first prisoners are expected to move to the Pozarevac unit this spring.
Completing the package
The Special Imprisonment Regime Law is part of a more comprehensive package of tools to fight organized crime that Serbia has adopted since Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was assassinated in March 2003. The co-operation between the Serbian Ministry of Justice, the OSCE Mission and the Italian Government has already been instrumental in the past, for the drafting and passing of the Law on Witness Protection and the Law on Assets Seizure.
Says Livio Sarandrea, Senior Co-ordinator for Judicial and Legal Reform of the OSCE Mission to Serbia, "By introducing the Special Imprisonment Regime Law, Serbia has filled one of the most serious gaps that still existed in the system."