ON THE POPULATION OF THE PRE-DETENTION ROOMS,

AN ACUTE PROBLEM FOR THE PUBLIC ORDER PRESERVATION

The Albanian Helsinki Committee (AHC) has more than once denounced the situation created in many police commissariats where persons sentenced from the courts are being held there. The media reports time and again about the fleeing of these persons. In July 2001 there fled four sentenced persons while recently, April 9, 2002 there fled another sentenced person, author of grave crimes. The media has also published a statement attributed to “one of the senior Public Order Ministry officials", according to whom, the commissariat cells around the country shelters some 400 sentenced persons.

The problem of the over-population at the police commissariats should be observed from two angles. First, as a necessary step to cut the way to the efforts of any prisoner to escape justice. Second, the AHC has considered the case as a need to give an end to the over-population to the police environments, to put the prisoners under normal conditions according to all the rules defined for the prisoners at their suffering accommodation places.
It is true that public order institutions have undertaken some steps in this direction. But the main thing is the prevention of such cases that are happening too often. With the levels it has reached this problem should attract the attention of the government authorities in order to treat it as an important issue and not to leave it only under the competencies of the Public Order and Justice Ministries.

10.04.2002