The sentencing of a 24-year-old man by the Famagusta Permanent Criminal Court last Thursday, April 30, 2026, to a ten-year prison sentence for a knife attack and the serious injury of an 18-year-old at a restaurant in Paralimni, raises the issue of the lack of effective rehabilitation programs for the social reintegration of violent offenders, either during or after their incarceration.
Some return to prison time and again, repeating criminal acts, and this is the case of the 24-year-old who stabbed the 18-year-old on August 16, 2025, just two days after his release(!).
According to Natasa Christoforou’s report, he went to that particular restaurant to ask for money from someone who worked there. He left, however, after the restaurant owner’s 18-year-old son asked him to leave the premises.
He returned shortly afterward and stabbed the 18-year-old in front of the patrons. The victim suffered a kidney injury and was hospitalised.
Half an hour later, the suspect was spotted walking around in just his underwear in the Paralimni area… He was initially arrested for the offenses of causing alarm and public disturbance, as he began shouting when police officers approached him.
After his arrest, it was determined that he was the person who had stabbed and injured the 18-year-old half an hour earlier!
As stated in last Thursday’s conviction, the Court considered his criminal record as an aggravating factor, among other things, since he had previous convictions for similar offenses and had been released from prison just two days before the incident in question.
The repeated commission of crimes by individuals who are convicted and in and out of prison was one of the topics discussed at a conference on Forensic Psychology at UCLan Cyprus University in Pyla, which I referenced in the aforementioned columns.
As Dr. Lilia Psalta, Assistant Professor of Psychology at UCLan Cyprus, noted in her speech at the conference—citing international research data—many offenders “keep coming back to the criminal justice system, going through a ‘revolving door’ from the street to court, to a cell, and back again, without ever receiving the support and meaningful mental health treatment they need.”
In her lecture, Dr. Kalliopi Dimitrouli, a distinguished legal scholar in Greece, also addressed the issue of recidivism, emphasising that “prisoners need social reintegration and empowerment programs so that they do not experience incarceration as wasted time.”
She added, however, that “there are ‘turning points’ where a person in confinement may decide to change their dysfunctional value system and reintegrate into society. This is very difficult, but counseling and education programs help.”
