Kazakhstan Is Going to Build New Prison Camps

Over the course of the next three years, the government of Kazakhstan is going to build four prison facilities in Almaty, Aktobe, Mangystau and Turkestan regions, according to ErlanTurgumbayev, a minister of internal affairs while speaking before members of parliament.

As the vast majority of prisons in Kazakhstan were built back in the 1950s and 1960s, they are almost worn out. Ministry of Internal Affairs even destroyed six of the oldest buildings which had been in a state of disrepair.

«Currently, we are trying to figure out how we can cooperate with business to build these new prison facilities. Over the next three years, we are going to construct four such facilities in the regions of Almaty, Aktobe, Mangystau and Turkestan for 1,500 inmates each. About a half of the facilities’ territory is going to be used as a special industrial area,» Turgumbayev said.

The ministry says that the penitentiary system infrastructure modernization plan calls for building twenty new prison facilities in general. All of them should meet the best practices adopted in this sphere worldwide. New facilities are going to be built by the end of 2029 under a public-private partnership program.

«We are going to move all inmates from barrack-type prisons to separate cells. So far we run nine such modern facilities with 4,000 inmates. This plan requires a lot of money so we are going to do that work in stages, at first to renovate the current prisons and then build new buildings,» said the minister.

There are 80 prison facilities in Kazakhstan with 34,000 inmates; most of them have been put into jail for serious crimes.