During the meeting of the State Security Council of Turkmenistan on March 1, which was also attended by the speaker of the Mejlis of Turkmenistan, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov emphasized the need for further liberalization of the criminal procedural law.

As the Turkmenistan.ru correspondent reports from Ashgabat, the president proposed to reduce the maximum penalty for serious criminal offenses from 25 to 15 years, and ensure greater public control over the management of prisons and colonies.

According to the head of state, it is necessary to develop the practice of punishment in the form of fines, to increase the role and significance of defence lawyers in court proceedings, to establish supervisory boards, to actively engage convicts in labor education through organization of industrial units in colonies.

Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov instructed the Mejlis of Turkmenistan and the Ministry of Justice to draft a new Penal and Correctional Labor Code, which, inter alia, would authorize the Commission on the Prerogative of Mercy to exclude drug dealers from the lists of pardoned convicts, as well as several other measures aimed at improving the conditions of detention of convicts in prisons.