MPs of the Legislative Chamber in the first reading today passed a bill aimed at increasing the effectiveness of correctional work with convicts.

Deputy Interior Minister/Head of Investigation Department, Ramazon Ashrapov reported that there was a need to adopt provisions aimed at encouraging law-abiding behavior of convicts, respect for people, society, labour, rules and traditions.

According to him, for correctional purposes it was important to engage convicts in reading popular science and fiction books. "Because reading will help a convict understand not only his/her feelings and emotions, but also to realize the feelings and emotions of other people in society, their worldview and desires," he said.

The bill proposed to insert a new article 74-1 to the Criminal Code on the "moral correction of convicts" by engaging them into reading books. Convicts will be entitled for reduction of term by 3 days for each book they read from the approved list, provided that they successfully pass the exam in the established manner.

In addition, when deciding on parole or replacing a sentence with a more lenient one, the participation of the convict in this program will be taken into account.

It also proposed to amend the Criminal Procedure Code (Article 536-1) and the Criminal Executive Code (Article 80-1) to regulate the procedural procedure for reducing the sentence for the independent correction of the convict and providing the necessary educational literature.

Ramazon Ashrapov stated that all 49 penal institutions in Uzbekistan have libraries with over 230,000 books.

In 2012, an initiative was launched in federal prisons in Brazil, according to which each book read from an approved list reduced the prison term by four days, but no more than 48 days per year. To do this, prisoners had to write an essay on the book they had read.