This year the President pardoned 67 convicts

Since June 2015, there have been five meetings of the Commission on Pardons under the President of Ukraine, which was created in May. Based on its recommendations, the President pardoned 67 persons. At the same time, 1,260 convicts were refused their petitions. This was announced at a briefing by the head of the Pardons Department of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine, Oleksandr Bukalov.

In total, for the period from 6 February 2014 to 10 December 2015, the Department received 4,137 appeals regarding the pardon of 3,249 persons.

Since pardons did not occur for over a year, statistical data for this period should be provided separately. Thus, in the 16 months before the first meeting of the Commission on 9 June 2015, 3,313 appeals were received regarding the pardon of 2,540 persons (on average, 206 appeals regarding 158 persons were received per month).

After the first meeting of the Commission, over the following six months – until the moment the fifth meeting was held at the beginning of December 2015 – 824 appeals were received regarding 709 persons (on average, 136 appeals regarding 118 persons per month). At its first meeting, the Commission made decisions regarding 891 persons, and at the four subsequent meetings from July to December – regarding 436 convicts. A significant volume of appeals was received from relatives of the convicts, their lawyers, people’s deputies, and public organisations in the absence of an appeal from the convicted person themselves on whose behalf they were petitioning. They were provided with clarifications that a pardon petition must be initiated directly by the convict themselves. After all, only in such a case does the Pardons Department receive a set of documents from the penal institution that allows for a full consideration of the petition and the making of a reasoned decision regarding the possibility of applying an act of pardon. For this, the Department requires an appeal from the convict themselves, a copy of the verdict, the convict’s questionnaire, data on penalties and incentives, medical certificates, the institution’s character reference, etc.

This year, the President pardoned 25 women and 42 men. At the same time, 18 persons were fully released from serving their sentences and were set free, and for another 49, the terms of punishment were significantly reduced.

Almost a third of them are of retirement age. The vast majority of those pardoned have only one conviction. Persons who have more than one conviction or who committed grave or especially grave intentional crimes (robberies, rapes, murders, sale of narcotic substances, etc.) were refused in the satisfaction of their petitions.

Often, convicts who committed a non-grave crime but have actually served a very short term of punishment also appeal.

Among those pardoned in 2015, there are no life-sentenced prisoners, although several petitions were received from such persons who had already served 20 years of their sentence.

To this day, pardon is the only legislatively defined way for life-sentenced persons to get a chance to be set free.

Understanding the significant public interest in its work, the Pardons Department tries to make it as transparent as possible. All Decrees on pardons are published on the website of the President of Ukraine. And although they do not contain surnames, the public is informed about the fact of the pardon and the number of pardoned persons.

At the beginning of October, the Department held an Open House. Representatives of public organisations, parliamentarians, and journalists had the opportunity to learn more about the work of the Pardons Department and the Commission, its features, and approaches to reviewing convicts’ petitions.

“We believe that the activities of the pardon institution should be communicated more to the public, and controversial issues regarding the improvement of the procedure for reviewing pardon petitions should be discussed”, – says the head of the Department, Oleksandr Bukalov.