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According to a statement by the Ministry of Defence, there were 224,878 people in prisons 85,105 of whom are arrested and 139,773 are convicted as of June 15, 2017.
Noting that the prisons had a capacity of 202,676 prisoners, the Ministry has underlined that the current number of prisoners exceeded the capacity by 22,000.
The Ministry gave the above mentioned figures as a response to Republican People's Party (CHP) Ankara MP Murat Emir's information request.
Emir with regards to the figures given by the Ministry said:
"We see that over 80,000 are being in pre-trial detention. This is the actual reason for the crowd in the prisons. Actually, people are standing trial, they principally are not in detention on remand. But we have reached such a point today, that the judges are afraid that they themselves would be arrested it they did not order arrest for others. (AS/DG)
