RA Deputy Minister of Justice Levon Balyan, CE Program Coordination Director Caus Neukirch, Head of CE Armenia Office Martina Schmidt, accompanied by Head of Probation Service Gevorg Simonyan, toured the Professional Training Center of Probation Service opened in Ararat Marz.

Levon Balyan noted that the close cooperation between the Ministry of Justice and the Council of Europe has a history of many years, during which the support provided in almost all directions of the justice sector recorded visible results. Balyan emphasized the importance of reforms implemented by the Ministry in the field of probation and jail.

In particular, within the framework of reforms in the field of probation, several steps were implemented with the support of the Council of Europe, including an analysis of the legislation, recommendations were presented, based on which a relevant legislative package was developed, work was carried out to create an "e-probation" system, improvement of probation beneficiary risk and needs assessment tool, increased awareness of the probation institution, etc.

Levon Balyan highlighted the resocialization programs implemented for probation beneficiaries, as a result of which the probation beneficiary will be able to integrate into society and enter the labor market without obstacles.

During the tour, the CE Program Coordination Director, Klaus Neukirch, got acquainted with the center's work and talked with the beneficiaries of the probation. Claus Neukirch informed that the Council of Europe would continue to support the Probation Service in capacity building.