Sarajevo, 5 March 2010 (ONASA) – With around 900 sentenced persons walking freely in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) due to insufficient prison capacities, FBiH Ministry of Justice has been working diligently on finding alternative methods of executing penal sanctions. Last year, the Ministry launched an initiative for the introduction of house arrest under electronic surveillance and, on March 3-5, 2010, hosted a workshop to offer the final draft of legal and implementation solutions for this project.

FBiH Minister of Justice, Feliks Vidović, stressed that these sanctions would be implemented for persons who received one year or less prison sentence, emphasizing that the alternative actions would result in considerable savings since the accommodation of prisoners in FBiH costs 80-100 KM per day.

The task force entrusted with alternative sanctions has determined necessary interventions within the legislative framework intended for project realization, explained Vidović, and FBiH Government will consider this material in ten days.