It is necessary to expand the use of alternative forms of punishment to imprisonment, says Russian President Dmitry Medvedev

“We await specific proposals from our legislators and law-enforcement agencies,” the president said on Tuesday. He was attending a ceremony in the Georgievsky Hall of the Great Kremlin Palace at which officers appointed to leading posts in the armed forces were presented.

In his words, the penitentiary system faces the tasks of humanising the system of punishment for criminal offences and of the social adaptation of the convicted.

(Interfax, 30 September 2008)