Legal Aid for Penal Institution Staff

As part of the project “Ensuring the Social and Legal Protection of Penitentiary System Staff – A Guarantee of Respect for Convicts’ Rights”, supported by the International Renaissance Foundation, the charitable organisation “Chernihiv Women’s Human Rights Centre” is conducting work to provide legal assistance and legal education to staff at penal institutions in the Chernihiv region.
Qualified lawyers from the Chernihiv Regional Department of Justice, the Department of Labour and Social Protection of the Population, the Centre for Social Services for Family, Children, and Youth, and other city organisations are being invited to these institutions to provide expert assistance in the sphere of civil, family, and matrimonial law.
At the end of May, specialists from the Notarial Department of the Chernihiv Regional Department of Justice and the Department for Citizenship, Immigration, and Registration of Individuals of the Novozavodskyi District Division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine in the Chernihiv region spoke to the staff of Penal Colony No. 44 to provide legal knowledge necessary both for protecting the violated rights of staff and for providing primary legal assistance to convicts.
The penal colony staff received specific knowledge in the field of civil law, namely: legal regulation of inheritance by will and by law.
Staff from the regional Department of Justice acquainted them with concepts such as: the composition of an estate, the opening of an inheritance, the place of opening an inheritance, and heirs.
The staff were also made aware of the rights and obligations of persons not included in the estate, the procedure for exclusion from the right to inherit, and inheritance of a share in the right of common joint ownership.
The activities of the charitable organisation “Chernihiv Women’s Human Rights Centre” in the sphere of legal education and legal aid for staff at Chernihiv Penal Colony No. 44 are systematic in nature. Their objective is to foster a culture of law and the assimilation of necessary legal knowledge among staff so that, by knowing their rights and obligations, they will be able to protect themselves independently from unlawful actions by law enforcement agencies.
Furthermore, department heads and staff of the regime and operations departments, by mastering the norms of the law, will be able to provide direct legal assistance to convicts regarding inheritance law.
The participation of staff from the Department for Citizenship, Immigration, and Registration of Individuals of the Internal Affairs bodies in the Chernihiv region in these events provides an opportunity to become acquainted with the regulatory acts of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine regarding the procedure for issuing passports and registering the place of permanent residence for convicts, which will facilitate the resolution of documentation issues for those released from places of detention.