On 13 January 2021, Minister of Justice Maja Popović visited the Belgrade District Prison and the Special Prison Hospital, where she talked with the management of both institutions about their work and the Ministry’s support for improving the living conditions of persons deprived of liberty.
One of the topics discussed were timely measures taken by the Ministry of Justice and the Penal Sanctions Enforcement Administration in March 2020, aimed at protecting the health of convicts and detainees, which were still in place, including coronavirus tests done preventively on a daily basis. ‘There have been only a few sporadic cases in the past 15 days, which means that the number of those infected has dropped across the entire system,’ Minister Popović said after touring the Belgrade District Prison, the largest detention facility in the Balkans. ‘The presence of the coronavirus has been confirmed in 90 out of 10,556 persons deprived of liberty, as well as in 107 out of 4,195 employees, which is 0.8% and 2.5% of the total, respectively,’ she added, noting that the coronavirus had been detected in eight out of 29 prisons in Serbia. Governor of the Special Prison Hospital Dragoljub Paunović specified that five hospitalised patients had been tested positive for the coronavirus. They have had a mild clinical picture and their treatment is nearing completion.
In the meeting with Belgrade District Prison Governor Zvonko Grulović and Special Hospital Governor Paunović, Minister Popović emphasised that the Ministry of Justice would continue making every effort to improve the living conditions of persons deprived of liberty, as evidenced by many investments in the construction of new wings of the Zabela and Sremska Mitrovica prisons and the Leskovac District Prison, as well as of a new modern prison in Pančevo. She noted that nine out of the twelve blocks of the Belgrade District Prison had been adapted and renovated, indicating that the renovation of its two detention blocks was planned to begin in 2021, whereas the construction of a new registration desk was to be completed in March 2021.
Minister Popović and Director of the Penal Sanctions Enforcement Administration Dejan Carević also toured the Special Prison Hospital which had been invested in and renovated, thus becoming, as the Minister observed, a representative healthcare institution within the penal sanctions enforcement system using state-of-the-art equipment and methods for diagnosis and treatment. Minister Popović had the opportunity to see, inter alia, a modern laboratory, a dental office and the chapel of the Serbian Orthodox Church, the renovation of which was underway.
Director Carević mentioned that a new prison in Kragujevac was being constructed to accommodate 500 persons. In addition, the development of the project documentation for a prison wing in Sremska Mitrovica, which is to house 200 persons, is to commence before the end of the year.