CONDITIONS in jails could hamper Bulgaria's bid for membership of the European Union.

The dire situation is leading to increasing pressure on the Government to bring its treatment of prisoners into compliance with basic human rights standards.

Prison massacres, dramatic protests, and violent abuse by guards prompt occasional news headlines, but the deplorable daily living conditions that are the plight of the great majority of the world's prisoners pass largely unnoticed.

"There are a number of violations inconsistent with EU requirements," Krassimir Kunev of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC) said at the end of July.

Five NGOs, which submitted a preliminary report on prison condition, announced that living conditions in the penitentiary institutions in the country were better than in the psychiatric institutions.

The preliminary report drawn up under the project says material conditions in some Bulgarian prisons posed a serious problem.

The buildings were in disrepair, with poor sanitation and substandard cells as well as overcrowding and excessive periods of pre-trial detention and beatings, and ill-treatment in police custody.

Inmates protested against poor conditions last year, taking over the roof of Sofia's central prison, and carrying out hunger strikes in Varna. Most of the penal institutions were built in 1930s while the Sofia Central Prison will be a century old in 2010.

The crowding rate in prisons, tracked since 1999 when the project was launched, had reached 140 per cent, according to Stanimir Petrov, a co-author of the BNC report on Bulgaria.

The mechanisms of commutation of sentences - conditional sentencing, early release or corrective labour - are imperfect and create prerequisites for corruption. Many prisoners are illiterate or semiliterate and cannot adequately avail themselves of their rights.

A prisoner's daily food allowance is 1.66 leva, according to the report.

"Prisoners get a just a little bit more money a day than pensioners do," said Petar Vassilev, head of the punishment implementation directorate. And this, however, is extremely insufficient, according to both the five NGOs and Vassilev.

The right to correspondence and visits is restricted in Bulgarian prisons. This is very often used as a punishment. Unlawful punishments by the prison administration are another serious problem.

"Surprisingly, punishments are most often imposed in the women's prison in Sliven," Kunev said.

The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), the Council of Europe's official prison monitoring body, inspected some of Bulgaria's penal institutions last April and found positive changes, said Vassilev.

"Conditions in prison and police detention remained alarming," the CPT report said.

There are 13 penitentiary institutions including the penal institution for boys in Boichinovtsi in the whole system of jails in Bulgaria, accommodating 9, 423 prisoners altogether. In addition to this number there are 23 labour hostels, where non-recidivists with sentences up to five years are accommodated. The convicts in the latter penal institutions even have a month leave, Vassilev said. There are also 74 detention awaiting trial arrests for defendants. According to information given to The Echo by Vassilev, of those in detention in the country, 406 are awaiting trial, 1,408 are prisoners undergoing trial and 7, 609 are convicts serving various sentences. About 60 per cent from all these prisoners are serving sentences of less than five years.

Of the overall figure, there are 309 women in the Sliven female jail. Less than 10 per cent are doing sentences of more than 10 years, and there are 85 people with penal servitude for life.

About 140 to150 foreigners are in custody or are convicts in Bulgarian penal institutions.

"Most often foreigners convicts recently have been involved with drug dealing or pay-offs on Bulgarian territory," Vassilev said.

According to him, penal servitude for life is imposed for a minimum term of 20 years because it is not in accordance with the European practice.

"Now we are in a period of moderate prisoner's population compared to previous more intense periods," Vassilev said. He said that the high peak for the number of prisoners was 1985-86 when they numbered 18,000.

Convicts were now mostly people younger than 35, Vassilev said.

Most were jailed for vehicle-related crimes, housebreaking, and unprovoked assault.

"The latest group of defendants sentenced are young aggressive men who did xenophobic acts of violence," Vassilev added.

With scant public attention to the conditions in Bulgarian jails, public ignorance of prison inadequacies is further fostered by denying human rights groups, journalists, and other outside observers access to the penal facilities.

"Prisons were built away from people and we pretended they do not exist," Vassilev said. He added that this was the psychology of a society which aspired to prosperity.

Recently the NGO Human Rights Watch was not allowed to visit the two penal institutions where children are held in Bulgaria, Boichinovtsi prison (for boys), and Sliven prison (for women and girls). They were informed by the Boichinovtsi prison administration that Malena Filipova, of the Chief Prosecutor's Office, had issued an order banning the visits to both prisons though they had secured permission to visit the institution from the Chief of the Prison Administration, Zdravko Traikov.

They expressed concern about the reportedly large proportion of children held in pre-trial detention in prison and the mingling of pre-trial detainees with convicted juveniles.

They also expressed their deep concern about the lack of openness and cooperation demonstrated by Government authorities towards external attempts to monitor conditions in both prisons and Labour Education Schools in Bulgaria.

"The prisoner must be taken care of with the presumption that he will leave the institution one day and will need to rejoin society," Vassilev said.

According to him the greatest question posing is what will be ahead of a person who has spent 10 years in a cell with only a one-hour outdoor walk a day.

"Will this person be able to be accepted in society?" he asked.

There are two ways to prove that correction has influenced each single prisoner.

"One is through a positive attitude to work, or good behaviour," Vassilev said. "Unfortunately lately the prisoners' opportunities to work are quite tightened and limited," he said. About 35 per cent a year get work. This figure is higher in the spring and summer and for the rest of the time, authorities are not able to offer prisoners work.

One option are the newly established funds under the Ministry of Justice, a Court Houses Fund and a Prison Houses Fund. Both were set up for building, equipping, and maintaining court buildings, prosecutor's offices, investigation services, and prison houses, and of the technical facilities in these buildings.

"In such a way prisoners can show remorse and better adapt to life afterwards," Vassilev said.

Effective of January 1, 2003 Bulgaria will implement probation measures to replace prison sentences for minor crimes. Initially control will be exercised by the state. After a conference on the European probation system, Minister of Justice Anton Stankov said he also supported some private forms of control.

The secretary general of the Permanent European Probation Conference, John Walters, said that probation is the major tool in fighting recidivism. Not every prisoner should be regarded as a public threat, some of them can rejoin society, he said.

The Government views probation as an alternative to a prison sentence, thus allowing offenders to remain in the community under supervision while getting special support and doing community service.

Escape from prison is not common in Bulgaria, Vassilev said. Zdravko Petrov, a convicted murderer and an extremely dangerous karate expert, made an attempt to escape on March 4 this year.

29-year-old Petrov, from Rousse, managed to escape but was recaptured after a 36-hour manhunt. He has been returned to jail in Rousse to continue serving his long-term sentence.