According to literary critics, in the 1950s Romania there was a
\ngolden generation of Romanian poets who wrote their poetry in jail. Anti-Communist
\npolitical detainees such as poets Radu Gyr, Nichifor Crainic and Andrei
\nCiurunga turned into poetry the ordeal of hundreds of thousands of Romanians
\nsent to prison for having opposed the Soviet occupiers and the Romanian
\nCommunist party and political police, the Securitate. In those time, a vigorous
\ngeneration of prose writers emerged in the Romanian prisons. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Today, the false
\npolitical, media, sports and business elites of Romania, who have been put
\nbehind bars for having plundered the country, have suddenly discovered a talent
\nfor writing essays, memoirs, historical papers or financial analyses. People
\nwith precarious education, who used to be mocked at publicly for their grammar
\nmistakes, have become famous writers overnight, being the authors of books
\nwhich they claim they have written while in prison. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The stake in this cultural
\nfrenzy is purely pragmatic. Under the current legislation, for each so-called
\nscientific paper, which is considered a method of re-education through work,
\nthe sentence of a convict is reduced by one month. On Thursday, the Ethics
\nCommittee of the Bucharest University, which is in charge of analyzing the
\npapers written by convicts for the purpose of reducing their sentences,
\nestablished that a paper authored by businessman George Copos was the result of
\nplagiarism. A former Communist activist, a former post-Communist deputy prime
\nminister and a former financier of the Rapid football club, Copos has already
\nbeen released from prison. He had been convicted for large-scale financial
\nfrauds. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Under pressure from the public opinion and the academic community, the
\nJustice Minister Raluca Pruna has decided to set up a draft emergency ordinance
\nmeant to eliminate the possibility of reducing the sentences of convicts who
\nwrite scientific works in prison: There is a difference between physical work and intellectual
\nwork. For 4 days of physical work detainees receive one day off their sentence,
\nwhile for a paper called scientific work they get 30 days off.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Superior Council of Magistracy has cautiously expressed
\ndisagreement with the justice minister’s initiative. They say it is necessary
\nto toughen the conditions for the release of detainees by introducing
\nobjective, fair and transparent criteria when assessing the scientific nature
\nof the books published by detainees. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Here is Adrian Bordea, a judge with the
\nSuperior Council of Magistracy: Abrogating such a provision could be more harmful. Maybe
\nabrogation is not the best solution.<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Justice Minister Raluca Pruna insists that an emergency ordinance
\nmeant to abrogate the provision is absolutely necessary, since intellectual
\nforgery in prison has been gaining ground. At the end of 2015 alone, 45 papers
\nwere being written, while in early January their number exceeded 100. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Romanian Justice Minister Raluca Pruna wants to abrogate the provision according to which the convicts who publish scientific papers may benefit from shorter sentences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":67088,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-67087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n