While the Government suffers from a lack of financing, prison cells are overcrowded with prisoners. If initially, each colony was planned to contain nearly 700 persons, the actual number is over twice that figure. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, labor therapy that somehow promoted employment inside prisons and promised some job opportunities after release also disappeared. Now, poor living conditions and total unemployment leads prisoners to depressive states of mind, which in turn increase drug use.

The prison system registers drug users as persons diagnosed with drug addiction when arriving to the prison. As several interviewed NGOs pointed out, the number of people beginning to use drugs while in prison is not registered. The prison system nevertheless recognizes that inflows of illicit drug are present in the prisons. Therefore, the CPSD has sought to openly approach the problem and recognized it, calling on the international community to assist in conducting penal reform.

\"Syringe exchange programs began in prisons at the end of 2002 in two pilot colonies. Now this program covers all colonies, except for the female and youth prisons that are considered to have a more hygienic approach to drug use. The program has a good and provides promising results, even though there is no data on the HIV/AIDS situation”, says Elvira Muratalieva, coordinator of the public healthcare program of the Soros Fund in Kyrgyzstan, in an interview with the author.

Along with a legal program, the Soros Foundation carries out a medical program, the mission of which is to improve the penal healthcare system by integrating it with public healthcare services. Primarily, the program’s activity is targeted on drug users and HIV positive persons arriving to prisons. Elvira Muratalieva informed that plans exist to start a methadone project in prisons, starting daily therapy with a duration of one year for 20 patients, who had passed strict selection criteria to be included. “We are trying to make this project as efficient as possible, that’s why we are selecting candidates who have shown a steady desire to stop using drugs and need help for that”, she informed. “The efficiency of methadone therapy is that methadone guzzles receptors responsible for getting euphoria out of drugs for 24 hours. And even if therapy participants use opiates, they would not get high. It would give only a somnolent effect and nothing more”, Elvira Muratalieva told the Analyst.

Recently, IRINnews.org reported that the “Kyrgyz Justice Ministry estimates that approximately 2,000 out of 17,000 prisoners serving their terms are infected with the \"open\" (easily contractible) form of TB. According to doctors, each sick person with this form of the disease can infect up to 100 people after being released from prison”. That implies that without appropriate treatment, released prisoners could potentially harm 200,000 persons, a figure that would make it necessary to close the country down for quarantine.

According to the official data by the beginning of April 2004, there were 160 HIV carriers in prisons. The individual prison administrations cannot disclose data on the HIV status of the inmates. Yet frequently prisoners speak about their HIV positive status themselves, and moreover, they have indulgences: separate dishes, the right not to take part in internal assemblies, etc. HIV positive persons also receive a special examination and treatment at the medical departments of the prisons. Such treatment of HIV positive individuals gives a signal that dissemination of the virus among prisoners could be limited and that the risk of its subsequent transfer into the rest of the Kyrgyz population also is limited.

Sherboto Tokombaev, director of the NGO Center for Therapy “Ranar” further developed the theme of the lack of work mobilization of prisoners. “Initially when convicts are imprisoned, they have neither higher nor specialized education. Staying in prisons, having anything to do, they further degrade and get depressed. What could they do after release? Nothing, but stealing and being imprisoned again”.

Ranar has targeted its efforts exclusively on aid and therapy of HIV positive prisoners. In 1999, Ranar members organized and began to carry out the “12 step program for HIV carriers” according to the Minnesota model, which includes the first 3 steps of the program. \"We still hold therapeutic groups and create groups of mutual help among HIV-positive people in prisons. Since most of them are also drug users, we are working with these too. Our primary goal is to convey idea that if they do not change their behavior, they will not be able to change their lives either”, Ranar project manager Madina Toktogulova told the author. Ranar is also assisting prisoners prior to release by providing trainings on how to plan their future life. Further, Ranar has rented a farm, where ex-prisoners work as farmers and start a new life. “That’s why we call this center an adaptation center rather than rehabilitation”, said Sherboto Tokombaev.

Despite the meager subsidies for nutrition, prisons try to make changes themselves at least to provide better meals for the prisoners. Now each colony intends to organize mini-farms. In turn, the Government tries to resolve the problem of overcrowded prisons with legislative measures. By 2005, the level of overcrowdedness will be reduced from two to one and a half. Experts think that this measure could dramatically cut the new cases of drug use and the number of potential sources of diseases in colonies.