Every second inmate in Austrian prisons is a foreigner and violence and overcrowding are surging in the judicial system, it has been revealed.
The shocking statistics were revealed by Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung, who reported that there is an increasing number of foreigners being imprisoned in Austria.
Chronic overcrowding and increasing violence are becoming ever more pressing problems.
Precisely half of Austria’s inmates are not Austrian, despite only 17 percent of the country’s population having foreign citizenship.
Foreign inmates primarily come from Romania, Hungary, Nigeria, Turkey, and the countries that used to make up Yugoslavia.
The Austrian newspaper also reported that some prisons are 15 percent over capacity.
They also said that prison guards, social workers, doctors and nurses in charge of looking after prisoners are being overworked.
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Minister of Justice Alma Zadic, 37, who is a Bosnian-born Austrian lawyer and politician from the Green Party, is working on a prison reform policy to be decided upon this autumn.
Most notably, there is a desire to expand the use of electronic monitoring devices for prisoners under house arrest as a means to curtail prison overpopulation.
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Story By: Joseph Golder, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Newsflash
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