When in Ukraine can corruption cost you your freedom?!
According to official statistics from the State Department of Ukraine for the Execution of Sentences, as of 1 January 2010, 147,700 people were held in penitentiary institutions (http://www.kvs.gov.ua/punish/control/uk/publish/article?art_id=66313&cat_id=66312). At the same time, the estimated number of persons convicted for corrupt acts did not exceed 1%. In reality, the number of corrupt individuals in Ukraine's prisons and colonies is much higher. It is just that some are there by court verdict and thus ended up in the statistics, while others are there by labor contract. And if the former have already been caught and convicted for corruption, the latter have not yet been, and they continue to perform their official duties, working in the penitentiary service.
The penal legislation of Ukraine defines the main goal of the system of serving sentences as creating conditions for the correction and resocialization of convicts. Moreover, those who have committed or are committing criminally punishable acts must be corrected. The process of correction is provided by 47,600 employees of the penitentiary system. Furthermore, they are, by and large, the ones who determine whether a person has been corrected or not.
At the same time, the convict is given a clearly defined period of time for correction — the term of deprivation of liberty established by a court decision. This is the exact time a person must spend in an institution of the penitentiary system to be corrected.
If, however, a convict has been corrected earlier than the verdict provides, they may be released before the end of the term. Such a possibility in the Criminal Code of Ukraine is called parole (although this norm is not applicable to all categories of convicts). In order for this possibility to become a reality, Article 81 of the Code specifies that a convict, in addition to serving the necessary portion of the sentence, must prove their correction through "conscientious behavior and attitude toward work." The criteria by which the degree of correction is evaluated are presented in the Methodological Recommendations of the Department for Organizing Work Related to Ensuring a Progressive System of Serving Sentences. At the same time, it is worth noting that neither the legislation nor the recommendations themselves explain the mechanism for their application.
Therefore, out of the 11 criteria presented in the document, it is very difficult to determine which are the most and which are the least significant. Furthermore, it is incredibly difficult to determine whether a convict worked "conscientiously" and "honestly," and how strongly they "strived" to raise their professional level, because such formulations of the criteria are quite abstract and vague. Therefore, the prison administration has to fill them with "content" independently. That is, at its own discretion. In such a situation, due to the ambiguity and fuzziness of legislative norms and procedures, it is very difficult for penitentiary institution staff to determine whether a convict can be recommended for parole or not. Corruption, in various sizes and forms, often helps to overcome this difficulty and make the necessary decision. But, one way or another, many convicts have to find ways to provide various benefits to colony workers. For some, for example, it proved sufficient to enrich a responsible administration officer with a few reams of paper or building materials for repairs. Others had to "settle" with money. For example, 2,500 US dollars, which one of the correctional colony employees extorted from a convict (http://www.unian.net/ukr/news/news-375280.html). And that is just for a transfer to an institution with a lighter regime of detention. It is not hard to imagine how much parole would cost from such an official.
Moreover, such cases are not isolated. To determine how often convicts enter into corrupt relationships with administration representatives while preparing for parole, the author surveyed more than 30 people who were released from places of deprivation of liberty. Furthermore, to provide a more complete picture, those who were released from penitentiary institutions located in different regions of Ukraine were interviewed during the survey. As it turned out, almost all those surveyed indicated that the prevalence of corruption when preparing a convict for parole is at least 90%. That is, based on the survey results, one can assume that out of 100 people who were released on parole, 90 were involved in corruption.
In this regard, it is worth noting that corruption, as a rule, involves two parties. And if one of the participants in the corrupt act is released, the second remains in the penitentiary institution, earning their state employee pension. At the same time, the Penitentiary Code states that, among other things, the execution of sentences in Ukraine is carried out with the goal of creating conditions for the correction and resocialization of convicts, and preventing the commission of new crimes both by convicts and by other persons.
Perhaps these "other persons" are the prison administration staff, and perhaps they, in the near future, will need correction, but how quickly this will happen, and whether it will happen at all in Ukraine, only time will tell.
Volodymyr Bocharov-Tuz, Creative Association "TORO"
Contact group in Ukraine, Transparency International
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Additionally: The State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine consists of a central apparatus, 25 territorial management bodies of the State Department of Ukraine for the Execution of Sentences in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, regions, the city of Kyiv, and the Kyiv region, and 184 institutions for the execution of sentences.
As of 1 January 2010, 147,700 people were held in the 184 institutions of the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine, including 38,000 people in 32 active pre-trial detention centers and 1,499 juvenile convicts in 10 educational colonies.