Mentally ill persons in prisons

25/01/2014 00:00

Dozens of recommendations and efforts have been made by the
Albanian authorities for resolving the issue of all mentally ill people
who are kept in prison, although there is no verdict from the court for
being guilty and stay in prison, but only a verdict to receive
obligatory medical treatment.

^{117 such people need to be held in a special institution, but the one that was about to be built in Kruje, was not realized and the institutions are forced to make a flagrant law violation.}

The authorities are currently discussing to build this Institution of Legal Psychiatry in the suburbs of Tirana. At least this has been discussed between the prisons and the Health Ministry.

“Foreign and Albanian experts at the Health Ministry, the Ministry of Justice and the General Prison Police, have studied the possibility of creating a special medical institution for these convicts, probably in the Tufina region. The institution that we currently have is not adequate for these citizens”, declared Rozalba Gogaj, specialist at the Prison Health Matters.

Besides the Albanian Committee of Helsinki, this matter has received the annual attention of the Ombudsman. In these recommendations given to the respective ministers, it is shown that the mentally ill patients are held against the law and against the judiciary verdicts that order obligatory medication.

The situation has become unbearable for the fact that since we have 46 citizens in the prison hospital, there are 46 beds that are occupied by these people, when they should have been kept somewhere else.

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