Armenia has a population of some three million, roughly the same as Wales.
Yet on the day of my visit, the youth prison had just 40 inmates, 20 convicted offenders and 20 on remand, aged between 14 and 18. On the same day, Wales had almost 200 young people in custody. Beyond such bare facts, comparisons are difficult because reliable statistics in Armenia are hard to obtain and the whole approach to incarceration is very different. What I was able to discern was that young people in the prison were serving a minimum of one year in custody, and the primary offending profile was persistent theft, probably because of abject poverty.
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