Visit to Lukianivska Prison reveals reforms in penal system (06/13/99)

Visit to Lukianivska Prison reveals reforms in penal system

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - The notorious Lukianivska Prison, like Ukraine's penal system as a whole, is slowly losing the vestiges of its Soviet and Russian colonial legacy.

Human rights abuses are, for the most part, a thing of the past, as are political prisoners, who were incarcerated at Lukianivska Prison regularly and in large numbers almost from the time the prison was constructed in 1863.

Two of Ukraine's pre-eminent independence leaders of the early 20th century, Volodymyr Vynnychenko and Mykhailo Hrushevsky, who led the short-lived Ukrainian National Republic, were held here. So were many of the academics and literary figures destroyed by the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. In the 1970s, the Soviets imprisoned the Ukrainian political dissident Mykola Horbal here. In the 1980s it was the undesired domicile of Serhiy Naboka, one of the very last political dissidents to be imprisoned.

The current Lukianivska is far different from what it was said to be under Soviet and Russian rule, when it was widely known as a dark, dank and dirty torture chamber and starvation machine.

Today nearly 3,500 individuals are held at the Lukianivska Prison, now known as the Kyiv Investigative Confinement Facility. They are men, women and teenagers awaiting criminal court proceedings on charges ranging from petty larceny and racketeering to murder, or convicts who are serving out sentences.

Although conditions are much improved and torture is no longer officially sanctioned as Ukraine begins to meet modern-day standards for prisoner treatment, Lukianivska Prison is not without its problems.

Mostly it suffers from overcrowding and a shortage of corrections officers - a result of the huge increase in crime and criminals after the strong arm of the Soviet police state withered away and a Ukrainian economy that has failed to provide adequate jobs and living standards for its citizens.

Even after several expansion projects, the Lukianivska Prison is still meant to hold only 2,850 inmates. To make room for everyone, the incarcerated must live six in a cell that averages approximately 4 meters by 7 meters (12 feet by 21 feet).

There are merely 444 prison guards to control the prison population, which is far below the European standard for inmate to guard ratio of 2:1. The same problem exists in most of Ukraine's 183 detention centers, a figure that includes 139 penal colonies and 32 facilities such as Lukianivska. Surprisingly, there have been relatively few violent incidents and escape attempts among the 223,900 inmates who comprise Ukraine's prison population, of whom more than 180,000 are convicts.

In 1998-1999 officials reported only two deaths from violent encounters among prisoners, one severe beating and 89 escape attempts.

The overcrowding has brought with it another more deadly problem: a plague of tuberculosis. The disease runs rampant among the prison population today and the fatality rate is high. Of the 1,901 prison deaths registered in the system in 1998, 45 to 50 percent were from the disease.

The concrete buildings of the Lukianivska Prison, with their thick, white-washed walls, are still cold and damp, but the prison cells are clean, the corridors well lit. Although no officials hide the fact that there is little money forthcoming from government coffers, the inmates look reasonably healthy and well fed.

The prisoners get fresh bread daily along with their three meals. They have their own showers and enclosed toilets, access to a library, a chapel and a television room and are given recreation time. They work daily in the prison's kitchens and production facilities helping to prepare their own meals and manufacture their own linens, pillows and garments. Those with clean prison records are allowed to work on crews maintaining the prison grounds.

The prison also has a 120-bed hospital, but, like everywhere in Ukraine, there is a shortage of medical supplies. Like hospital patients throughout Ukraine, inmates find they are mostly responsible for obtaining needed medicines through their families.

Upon arrival at the facility, each inmate is tested for tuberculosis and venereal diseases. During his incarceration he is allowed to write letters and correspondences freely and as often as he chooses, and can see visitors once a month for four hours.

The conditions at Lukianivska are much better than they are at local prisons scattered around Kyiv and in the regions, prison administrators and several of the inmates agreed. Among them was Maya, who is serving a three-and-a-half-year sentence for racketeering. She is one of 10,300 female convicts imprisoned in Ukraine nationwide and one of the 240 at Lukianivska Prison.

Even as the 52-year old inmate protested to reporters gathered around her cell during a tour of the prison that she was unjustly convicted, she admitted that the living conditions at Lukianivska were ever better than at the district prison where she was held earlier.

"In the Leninhradskyi district we were held 12 to a cell and had to take turns sleeping on six beds," said the inmate. "Compared to there, this is absolutely heaven."

Thirty of Lukianivska's inmates sit on death row, but no one believes that they, or Ukraine's 380 other death row inmates, will soon face execution. President Leonid Kuchma issued a moratorium on capital punishment in March 1997 and, although dozens have been sentenced to death since then, no one has faced execution by firing squad, the state's preferred method.

The Ukrainian government issued the general stay of execution after much pressure was brought to bear by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, in which Ukraine holds membership. The assembly threatened to ban Ukraine from its proceedings and even to revoke its membership if it did not begin to uphold pledges it had made upon entering the international body, including one that rejects "state murder."

The "Europeanization" of Ukraine's penal system has quietly moved forward, even as its refusal to abolish the death penalty, which a majority of Ukrainians support, has made it somewhat of a pariah in the Council of Europe.

Since declaring independence in 1991, Ukraine has signed onto several European concords in which it has promised to bring its penal system and human rights standards to Europe's levels.

In March it began the process of separating the penal system administration from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ukraine's state police, and forming an independent State Department of Penal Corrections.

Ivan Shtanko, director of the new department, noted to what extent the mission of the penal system has changed. He explained that today the department's responsibility is not only to punish but to rehabilitate. "The job of the penal system is also to return the incarcerated to society and to his family in a healthy state," said Mr. Shtanko. He added, "Today we have to ensure that their basic needs and human rights are met."

The director acknowledged that the corrections system also holds responsibility for training its inmates and preparing them for re-entry into society at large.

He said the basis for the human rights procedures being developed by the penal corrections department are Ukraine's Constitution and European standards.

"There is an ongoing review of our operations so that they stay in line with the Constitution and with European norms" said Mr. Shtanko.

Since 1992 Ukraine has issued a series of changes to its penal laws and procedures, including 16 statutes passed by the Verkhovna Rada, 11 presidential decrees and 15 resolutions of the Cabinet of Ministers. The reforms are aimed at reorganizing the penal system with emphasis on four areas: developing a high quality legal and normative base utilizing precedents established in other countries; developing the material-technical base for the penal institutions, including the formation of adequate facilities and conditions for the incarcerated; implementing new types and methods of correctional techniques; and providing access for the inmates to highly trained professionals.

Much of the effort is being coordinated with the Legal Committee of the Council of Europe, as well as with most of the law enforcement bodies of Ukraine.

There already have been several noteworthy achievements. Twelve additional prison colonies, which can hold 10,200 prisoners, opened throughout Ukraine between 1994 and1998 to give inmates more breathing room in the detention facilities.

To give the inmates better access to training and education, prison administrators have developed a staff of professionals in 30 diverse fields who work in most of the penal institutions.

To meet inmate psychological needs and to help socialize deviant behavior, a corps of psychologists has been added. In addition to providing counseling while in prison, the psychologists work with the inmates to help them adapt to life on the outside as well.

The State Penal Corrections Department has identified, not only rehabilitation, but inmate adaptation after his release as a major goal. It is developing a network of adaptation centers throughout Ukraine that will provide counseling and ex-convict services for those who have re-entered society. Thus such centers already exist in Zhytomyr, Lviv, Kharkiv, Kyiv Oblast and the Crimea.

With all the energy that Ukraine seems to be expending to make life for the incarcerated bearable, perhaps one event provided the best and quickest improvement in the lives of many prisoners. In July 1998, on the anniversary of the Constitution, the Verkhovna Rada and the government agreed to grant a general amnesty to 38,500 inmates convicted of lesser crimes. Although some penal experts believed the release would be followed by a crime wave, only 201 of those granted amnesty have been re-arrested in the last year, which has led Mr. Shtanko to push for a similar general amnesty this year.

For those held at the Lukianivska Prison and at similar facilities throughout Ukraine who did not and will not qualify for the amnesty, improvement in their living conditions is all they can hope for. As Mr. Shtanko said, "No matter what, the world of the prison is a truly sad world in all countries."

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