The Deputy head of the administration of Kazakh President...

The Deputy head of the administration of Kazakh President [Nursultan Nazarbayev] and the head of the state and legal department of the administration of the head of state, Igor Rogov, told an international conference in [the northern Kazakh capital] Almaty, forming the budget for 2003, the country's government should provide for introducing such measures of punishment as life imprisonment and work out all the practical and theoretical aspects related to this and that Kazakhstan will announce a moratorium on the death penalty in the near future.
In turn, the chairman of the committee of criminal-executive system (CES) of the Kazakh Justice Ministry, Petr Posmakov, told the conference that in introducing moratorium on death penalty, the issues on accommodation of the convicts, sentenced to life imprisonment, will have to be tackled. According to the CES estimates, he said, one prison will be needed for [every] 1,500 people serving life sentences. According to Posmakov's first estimates, based on practice, 25 to 50 people out of those sentenced to death, end up in prison annually.
He thinks that such convicts could serve their sentences in a special prison for 15 to 20 years and then, in case of good behaviour, they might be transferred to other types of prisons. Kazakhstan is working on the humanization of its penitentiary system, Posmakov said. Thereby a draft law, which lightens the punishment for a number of misdemeanors, has been submitted to the Parliament. The draft will help reduce the rate of incarceration. 13,511 people were sentenced in Kazakhstan in January-March 2002, as compared to 11,869 in January-March 2001, Rogov said.
Almost 41% of all convicts were incarcerated in January-March 2002, as compared to 52% in January-March 2001, he remarked.