Tartu's mayor, council chair protest prison committee selection process
Leaders of the Reform-Isamaa Tartu coalition have hit out at city authorities not being able to nominate members of the planned Tartu Prison oversight committee.
Tartu Prison is set to host inmates from Sweden following a prison rental scheme deal signed last summer. While the Reform Party has generally supported this move, Isamaa has criticized it.
However, Tartu Mayor Urmas Klaas (Reform) and City Council leader Tõnis Lukas (Isamaa) are united in their opposition to city nominees to the prison committee having to apply under the same competitive process as other applicants.
The Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs contacted the Tartu city government and the office of the city council on February 25, with a proposal to nominate city representatives to sit on the prison committee.
In that same communication, the point was made that the ministry, in cooperation with the prison service, had announced a public competitive process to find prison committee members.
The detailed conditions and application procedure of that process were attached.
The justice ministry noted that the same requirements also apply to any potential representatives nominated by the city of Tartu.
Both Klaas and Lukas found this requirement rendered the proposal contradictory, however.
"If the ministry truly wishes to develop good cooperation at the local level and wants to see representatives of the city of Tartu serving as members of the Tartu Prison committee, then the nomination of city representatives should take place outside the public competition. Considering the aforementioned, we do not consider it viable under these conditions to put forward representatives of the city of Tartu as members of the Tartu Prison committee," Klaas and Lukas wrote in a joint letter.
The five conditions which applicants to the committee needed to meet as set out by the ministry are:
- (Be an Estonian or other EU member state citizen of at least 21 years of age.
- Demonstrate Estonian language proficiency at the C1 level or higher in the Common European Framework and be a high school graduate as a bare minimum, as well as having an "impeccable background".
- Show a readiness to contribute to the work of the committee for the entire term of office.
- Not be currently employed as an official of an executive state authority.
- Demonstrate an understanding of the objectives and implementation of incarceration and an interest and willingness to contribute to the better reintegration of prisoners into society.
Tartu Prison was built in 2000 and is located on the southeastern outskirts of the city. It has space for 933 inmates, to be held in cells, plus an open prison accommodating a further 60 inmates.
Controversy arose last year over the Estonia-Sweden agreement to bring up to 600 Swedish inmates to Tartu Prison, or nearly two-thirds of total capacity, by renting out those spaces from the Estonian state.
The prison up to now has had a large amount of vacant cell space, but has been costing the taxpayer €12 million per year.
The ministry announced the public competitive process for the committees of all three of Estonia's prisons – for Tallinn and Viru prisons, as well as Tartu's. The committee's stated aim is to provide public oversight of the management of the prison, including implementing prison policy and reintegrating prisoners into society.
The committee would where possible include representatives of local councils, a member of the clergy, a member of a social rehabilitation NGO and a child protection specialist.
The Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs is Liisa Pakosta (Eesti 200).
Reform and Isamaa are in office together in Tartu.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte
