Penal Institutions
The Ministry of Justice is responsible for the overall administration, activities, and security of prisons. Outside guards are provided by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to the regulations, the primary responsibilities of prison administrators are to rehabilitate and to reeducate inmates.
Reeducation includes political reorientation, general education, and vocational training. All inmates are obligated to receive political indoctrination, which is intended to reorient them toward becoming cooperating members of the community. All of them are also required to perform useful labor—for vocational training, prison income, and benefit to the state. General education is compulsory for all prisoners under forty years of age who have not completed eight years of primary schooling. Vocational training, other than that derived from prison labor, varies with facilities available.
The physical facilities for confinement are classified as prisons, labor-correctional institutions, and correctional homes. The correctional homes are for minors. According to the seriousness of the offense and other factors, a prisoner may be confined in light, general, strict, or enforced strict disciplinary regimes, one of which is specified in his court sentence. The light regime is prescribed for first offenders who are serving time for minor crimes. The enforced strict regime is applied to recidivists, as an alternative to the death sentence, or to those considered dangerous or willfully and excessively uncooperative. The stricter regimes have less comfortable cells and furnishings, more rigid discipline, fewer individual privileges, and tighter security.
Prisoners are segregated by age, sex, and disciplinary regime. Women and minors serve their sentences in separate prisons or correctional homes. They are subject to much the same schedules as those in the prisons for male adults, except that theirs have no enforced strict regime. According to the law, those serving in different regimes are to be confined separately, and repeaters are to be confined in separate prisons from first offenders. Because there are a limited number of prisons, it may be necessary to meet the law's requirement for separation of prisoners by having different regimes in wards or buildings of the same prison complex.
The law on prison labor states that prisoners have the right to employment and political education and, at the same time, that they have the obligation to do the work and receive the political indoctrination. Inmates are given work assignments within seven days of their arrival at a prison. Their wages are based on the norms for the same kind of work done in enterprises throughout the country, and the same work and safety regulations apply. Inmates receive 20 percent or more of their wages. None except minors, incapacitated persons, or individuals who would work but who are for some reason unemployed may receive money from the outside.
Prisoners have the right to communicate with the prosecutors and courts that investigated and tried their cases and to submit petitions to them and to the Ministry of Justice. They may also see the chiefs of their prisons, correctional homes, or labor-correctional institutions in person. Other rights include time outdoors, exercise, visitors, correspondence, food parcels, possession of personal effects, and meetings and special correspondence with lawyers or other persons having a status or authority relative to their sentencing or confinement. The amount of time outdoors and correspondence and the numbers of visitors and parcels allowed vary with the severity of the inmate's disciplinary regime.
Correspondence and parcels are opened and inspected by prison officials. Visits are monitored; conversation must be in Bulgarian unless the administration has or can find a person who can understand the language to be spoken. Inmates are not allowed to gamble, consume alcohol, use narcotics, or sell or exchange personal property with other inmates. Minors may not smoke. Prisoners and their property may be searched.
Prisoners are rewarded for good behavior and punished for bad. When his pattern of conduct has become apparent over a period of time and it appears appropriate, a prisoner may be moved into a lighter or more severe disciplinary regime. If he has insufficient time remaining in his sentence to be moved into a different regime, he may be given extra privileges or be denied some of those to which he would ordinarily be entitled. Commitment to solitary confinement is limited to two weeks at any one time.
A number of sentences do not involve confinement. For a group of offenses related to poor working discipline, an individual can be given a corrective labor sentence. This usually involves harder work, somewhat longer hours, and strict supervision on the job. The law also provides for sentences that restrict the movement of an individual. In the most severe of these, he may be banished to and be required to remain in one certain area. In other situations he may be prohibited from visiting specified areas or, in the least severe case, he may visit but not take up residence in some specified locality.