Employees of the Probation Service test electronic monitoring devices

On 24 May, Deputy Minister of Justice of the Republic of Armenia Suren Krmoyan participated in the training conducted at the State Probation Service of the Republic of Armenia for the employees of the Probation Service.

The training — held within the scope of the Grant Project of the Council of Europe “Testing of electronic monitoring devices in the pilot subdivisions of penitentiary institution" — is being conducted by Ayvares Dalderise, expert from Israel.

According to Suren Krmoyan, the pilot Project will still have to pass a test to enable to assess its effectiveness and therefore the appropriateness of its full applicability. “It will be possible to address these questions after the end of the Project and the summarisation of its results in September 2017”, the Deputy Minister said.

Director of the State Agency of Judicial Projects Implementation Unit of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia Tatevik Davtyan informed that, in the course of the two-day training, 10 employees of the Probation Service will get acquainted with the rules of use and application of electronic devices for supervising convicts, the technical issues emerging in that process and the possible solutions to those issues.

She also stressed that, if necessary, the trained employees would go on to teach the rules of application of the aforementioned devices to other employees of the staff of the Probation Service.       

“Devices used for electronic monitoring are attached to the probation beneficiary or installed in the place of residence or location thereof; this is carried out through the application of the Global Positioning System (GPS) or radio wave, biometric, satellite or other technical devices and software, which enable to find out the location, movement, behaviour of the probation beneficiary and compliance with the restrictions prescribed by a judicial act," Tatevik Davtyan noted.

Let us note that, according to the legislation of the Republic of Armenia, electronic monitoring is applied in the pre-trial and trial stages of criminal proceedings as an intervention combined with alternative measures of restraint or security, and in the stage of executing the punishment, or in the post-release stage as a means of supervision combined with the execution of punishment.

In case of execution of punishment, conditional non-application of punishment, release from serving punishment, conditional early release from punishment, electronic monitoring is applied — in the course of conducting monitoring with regard to persons who are in the probation period, or whose serving of punishment has been postponed — on the basis of a judicial act, upon the motion of the prosecutor, the defending party, or on the own initiative of the court, and in the stage of execution of punishment, upon the motion of the Probation Service.

Head of the State Probation Service of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia Arsen Navasardyan was also present at the training.