- 38 76. The CPT’s delegation was briefed on the Ministry of Justice's plan, revolving around four axes, to ameliorate the prison service. The first axis focuses on decongesting the prison system, through a combination of building new prisons and working with neighbouring countries to enable the repatriation of foreign prisoners to serve their sentences in their home countries20. At present under international law prisoners can only be transferred to their countries of origin to serve out their sentences on a voluntary basis. Consequently, it is far from clear whether it will be viable to transfer a sizeable percentage of the prison population to their countries of origin. It is also evident, including from the delegation's own findings, that none of the countries in question are in a position to receive additional prisoners under satisfactory conditions without considerable investment in their existing prison estate and management. Therefore, the possibility of a future arrangement to reduce the numbers of foreigners within the Greek prison system should not in any way diminish the efforts that are incumbent upon the Greek authorities today to resolve the problem of overcrowding. The construction of new prisons has long been a central tenet in the approach by the Greek authorities to tackling the problem of overcrowding. The prison capacity has risen from 3,900 in 1993 to 5,000 in 2001 to 5,584 in 2005. However, the rise in the prison population continues to outpace the increase in capacity. Even the current plans to open six new prisons before the end of 2007, which will provide an additional 2,400 places, will in all probability be largely insufficient to meet future needs. 77. As the CPT has stated previously, the building of additional accommodation is unlikely, in itself, to provide a lasting solution to the challenge of overcrowding. A comparison with other European countries illustrates the difficulty of attempting to resolve the issue of overcrowding solely through increasing capacity. By contrast, the promotion of policies to limit and/or modulate the number of persons being sent to prison has tended to be an important element in maintaining the prison population at a manageable level. In its 2001 visit report21 the CPT drew the attention of the Greek authorities to Recommendation No. R (99) 22 of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers on this issue. Besides laying down some basic principles, the recommendation also suggests a number of specific tools which can be used to reduce prison overcrowding or to control prison population inflation. The CPT, therefore, recommends that the Greek authorities continue to pursue vigorously multi-faceted policies designed to put an end to overcrowding in prisons, having regard inter alia to the principles set out in Recommendation No. R (99) 22 and other pertinent Recommendations of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers to members States22. The Committee would like to receive detailed information on the measures being taken by the Greek authorities in this respect. 20 21 22 On 16 August 2005, foreigners comprised some 42% of the prison population, the vast majority of whom originate from Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro and “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”. cf. CPT/Inf (2002) 31, paragraph 57. cf. Rec.(2000) 22 of 29 November 2000 on improving the implementation of the European rules on community sanctions and measures and Rec. (2003) 22 of 24 September 2003 concerning conditional release.