Some forms of international economic cooperation as a key to resolving the problem of overcrowded penitentiary facilities in Serbia

Abstract

According to the latest published Council of Europe's Annual Penal Statistics, Serbia is still in the category of states with more than a hundred prisoners per hundred available prison places (Aebi, et. al., 2015). This grim image of Serbian prisons resembles the ones from penitentiary facilities across Italy, Greece, Croatia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Cyprus, Macedonia, Romania and other European countries. It should not be hard to understand that the real possibility of overcoming the obvious Serbian correctional system crisis lies in making new steady incomes and that the easiest way to do that is to target and efficiently attract foreign capital through some sort of economic cooperation. The basic condition, elimination of well-known Serbian administrative obstacles has in part been achieved by putting into action the Law on Public and Private Partnership and Concessions, in 2011. Taking into account the following facts: that half of Europe has the need for new high level security prisons, with latest equipment and highly trained personnel, respecting all standards of prison activities; that the simplest economic analyses rarely confirm profitability of maintenance and building new prison capacities on domestic territories, and therefore better solution may be their relocation in states with lover price of prison services; that it is desirable for those relocated prisons to have such geopolitical position that the prisoners' transport may also fit into general evaluation of the economic viability, Serbia has some comparative advantages among competition, hopefully enough to, possibly after foreign partners' withdrawal, solve - in the long run - the problem of overloading its own prison facilities. Regarding this, the Council of Europe's most recently published Annual Penal Statistics shows the amount of 97 euros per prisoner per day as the average cost in member states. The costs per prisoner were the lowest in Bulgaria and Greece (about three euros per inmate) and highest in Norway (283), Sweden (364) and San Marino (685 euros). In Serbia the specified amount spent on each prisoner was 14 euros a day (Aebi, etal. 2015). The goal of this article is to show that the Serbian legal system now formally allows moving in the direction described. Others, like the existence of political will, specific forms of legal affairs that will help the project to be optimally implemented, deeper economic and financial analysis of the most feasible options, character and number of counterparts, intensity and time period of hiring local capacities in the most general sense, etc. are questions for another occasion.