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Hungary Penal System
From 1949 to 1961, the penal system consisted of labor
or
internment camps and prisons with three types of
disciplinary
regimes. By 1961 the regime claimed it had abolished the
labor
camps. A law eliminated these different regimes, but a new
system
containing four regimes has been instituted since.
Confinement to
penitentiaries was the most severe regime under the new
system,
while local jails provided the lightest. Prisoners
sentenced to
the two intermediate regimes were assigned to one of two
different types of prisons. In 1975 the government
introduced an
additional regime for convicts who committed for the
fourth time
a violent crime carrying a sentence of more than one year.
In July 1989, a prisoner in the Vac Prison north of
Budapest
committed self-immolation, and several hundred of his
fellow
prisoners went on a hunger strike to protest the harshest
possible regime. The government immediately promised to
abolish
this regime, thus affecting 282 male and 14 female
prisoners.
In the late 1980s, the HPA possessed just one penal
battalion, located in Nagyatad in Somogy County. Soldiers
who had
received seven-month to two-year sentences were sent there
to
perform manual labor, primarily for the HPA but often for
the
national economy. Alcohol played a part in two-thirds of
crimes
committed by soldiers. At least one-third of these crimes
involved violence against superiors, insubordination, or
draft
dodging.
Data as of September 1989
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