“Improving further health-care services for drug dependent prisoners is a high priority for the Armenian prison system”, said Ara Hovhannisyan, Head of the Medical Unit of the Criminal Executive Department of the Armenian Ministry of Justice during a workshop organised by the Pompidou Group of the Council of Europe. In Yerevan on 9-10 June 2016, two Pompidou Group (PG) drug treatment experts from Slovenia – Dr Andrej Kastelic and Dr Nusa Segrec – shared their knowledge and discussed state-of-the-art interventions to tackle drug dependence in prisons with 25 prison doctors and psychologists.

The Pompidou Group provides professional training to the Criminal Executive Department and invites Armenia to exchange good practices – such as substitution treatment and harm reduction – with regional and international interlocutors within the framework of the regional “Criminal Justice Responses to Drug Dependent Prisoners” project of the EU/CoE Programmatic Cooperation Framework for Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Republic of Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus (PCF).