International Standards for Ukrainian Penal Colonies

At the seminar, which took place on 31 January 2008 as part of the project ‘Ensuring the Socio-Legal Protection of Penitentiary System Staff – A Guarantee of Respecting the Rights of Convicts’, supported by the International Renaissance Foundation at the Chernihiv Women’s Correctional Colony, it was discussed that personnel of penal institutions must be guided in their work by international standards for the treatment of prisoners.

This seminar-training was prepared and conducted for the staff of this institution by representatives of the charitable organisation ‘Chernihiv Women’s Human Rights Centre’.

During the session, particular attention was paid to the new edition of the European Prison Rules, which emphasises the need to respect the rights of staff and the importance of informing the public about the goals of the penitentiary system and the work of its personnel, in order to foster a better understanding of the role of penal institutions in society.

Unfortunately, the social prestige of the penitentiary profession remains low at present. The legal status of penal institution personnel is not clearly defined in current national legislation.

However, the effective operation of penal institutions, as emphasised in the European Prison Rules, depends on the careful selection of personnel, who must have appropriate professional training upon recruitment and must continuously improve this throughout their service.

Work in correctional facilities affects employees. On one hand, they are required to ensure order and safety; on the other, they must realise that, sooner or later, prisoners will return to society. Places of detention are sites of constant conflict, accompanied by outbursts of disobedience and violence from prisoners dissatisfied with their situation. Both prisoners and staff can fall victim to this. The higher the level of professional training among staff, the more capable they are of identifying problems and sources of danger and applying timely preventative measures to reduce risk. The constant readiness of staff to be attentive to the personal problems of prisoners, their ability to establish contact during conflict situations, and professionalism in resolving them will eliminate the emergence of the serious problems within the penal system that are present today.

Since society is the ‘customer’ of the social product provided by prisons, and public safety depends on its quality, its citizens should be most interested in ensuring that the personnel of the penal enforcement system have a positive influence on convicts, and consequently, on public well-being.

A socially vulnerable employee of the penal enforcement system, with low wages and no prospects for career advancement, is not capable of shaping a criminal into an individual who leads a law-abiding life and adheres to the legal and other social norms of the state and society.