How Many Prisoners Are There in Ukraine
HOW MANY PRISONERS ARE THERE IN UKRAINE
It seems that getting an answer to the question ‘How many prisoners are there in Ukraine?’ should not be difficult. It should be enough to send an inquiry to the Ministry of Justice requesting information on the number of prisoners in accordance with the Law of Ukraine ‘On Access to Public Information’ – and you will know the answer.
In reality, obtaining answers to this and similar straightforward questions from the Ministry of Justice is sometimes far from simple. Recently, it has become incredibly difficult, if not occasionally completely impossible.
For over 15 years, ‘Donetsk Memorial’ has sent standard statistical information inquiries twice a year to the leadership of the penitentiary system (and to the Ministry of Justice for the last two years).
All the information obtained through these inquiries can be found in the organisation’s 12 annual reports published on the ‘Prison Portal’ website (www.ukrprison.org.ua). While there have been attempts to deny us information, there are court rulings that have declared the actions of certain officials who refused to provide the requested information about the agency’s activities to be unlawful. For instance, by a Resolution dated 10 June 2008, the Donetsk Regional Administrative Court ruled that the untimely response provided to ‘Donetsk Memorial’ by the Head of the agency, V. V. Koshchynets, was unlawful (http://ukrprison.org.ua/ukr_decision/1214804052).
Another case: by a decision of the Budonivskyi District Court of Donetsk dated 14 September 2007, the refusal to provide information by the Head of the Department for the Execution of Sentences in the Chernihiv Region, V. Lopatin, was ruled unlawful (http://ukrprison.org.ua/ukr_decision/1205907395).
The current heads of the Ministry of Justice are unaware of this, which is probably why they are stepping on the same rakes yet again. However, in doing so, they have also enriched our experience with new methods of refusing to provide information.
We believe it is necessary to share the experience of ‘Donetsk Memorial’ in obtaining information from the Ministry of Justice in 2018, and the barriers we had to overcome on this difficult path.
In 2018, the first information request was sent to the Ministry of Justice on 11 January. At that time, ‘Donetsk Memorial’ sent an inquiry addressed to the Deputy Minister of Justice of Ukraine, D. Chernyshov, which contained the same questions we have traditionally asked for a decade.
From experience, we know that annual statistics in departments are typically compiled by 23–25 January. Therefore, our request was timed so that a response could be provided by 26–27 January. A potential delay of two, three, or four days beyond the statutory five working days was not significant to us, as it would be understandable in such a situation.
However, the Ministry of Justice replied that they needed 20 days to prepare a response. We did not object: very well, let it be. Perhaps the response is being prepared by inexperienced and low-competency staff who cannot find the couple of dozen figures we are requesting within five days. Although in previous years they somehow managed... We will wait.
In the response dated 8 February 2018 signed by D. Chernyshov, we received almost all of the requested data from the Ministry of Justice, but it turned out that information on four questions was not provided, including the questions regarding the number of HIV-infected persons in pre-trial detention centres, tuberculosis patients, and disabled persons among those remanded in custody.
And this did not concern us yet, as such things happen.
By a letter dated 13 February 2018, we requested this missing information.
And here we made our first minor slip-up: we sent the inquiry by regular mail rather than by registered post. We did so because we relied, so to speak, on the presumption of decency of the officials receiving the request. As it turned out, we were sorely mistaken about their decency.
It was very fortunate that we backed ourselves up and, just in case, also sent the request to the email address of the Deputy Minister of Justice, D. Chernyshov. Importantly, on the very same day at 4.32 pm, we received an email reply from D. Chernyshov’s address confirming that our message with the inquiry had been received. Under such circumstances, there seemed to be no reason to worry: there was a letter sent by post, and there was confirmation of the receipt of our email.
But time went by, and there was no response.
We began sending reminders about our inquiry of 13 February, doing so via emails on 16 February 2018 at 10.29 am and 12.28 pm, then on 19 February 2018 at 3.50 pm, on 21 February 2018 at 1.12 pm, on 12 March 2018 at 12.42 pm, and on 13 March 2018 at 10.12 am.
To one of these messages, a Ministry of Justice employee, S., replied, reassuring us in his message dated 23 February 2018 that a response was being prepared, and even providing us, unofficially so to speak, with the requested data:
‘As of 1 January 2018, the number of HIV-infected persons in pre-trial detention centres (and correctional facilities acting as pre-trial facilities) is 975; tuberculosis patients – 273; disabled persons among those remanded in custody – 151.’
He also mentioned the registration of our appeal, which was already at the Ministry of Justice:
‘Hello, something went wrong, the letter of yours that I sent for registration never reached us with the routing slip. In the meantime, I am sending you the data you are interested in. I will send it for re-registration, and they will sign a response for you on Monday or Tuesday.’
He also added that it would be better for us to send emails not to the address of the Deputy Minister of Justice, D. Chernyshov, but to another address – [email protected], which we subsequently did. Yet there was still no reaction whatsoever to these letters of ours from the Ministry of Justice.
In a message dated 5 March 2018, he again informed us about the preparation of a response, which was only possible if our request had been received:
‘5 March 2018, 9.18 am,
I have just spoken with my staff and I was told that the statistics on newly arrived individuals you requested are not kept by the Ministry of Justice. In order to obtain this information, you need to submit a request to the Judicial Administration. We are preparing a response of this nature for you.’
In the presence of such communication, could any reasonable person doubt that our requests had reached the Ministry of Justice?
We launched a new stage of our contest with the Ministry of Justice on 6 March, sending an information request regarding the results of the amnesty, but this time by registered letter No. 0316410777557. Using Ukrposhta’s tracking service, we established that this registered letter of ours had been received by the addressee by proxy on 13 March.
Just in case, we also duplicated the sending of this request letter by email to [email protected] and to D. Chernyshov’s email address. We sent this message several times. Furthermore, we always began enabling the ‘request read receipt’ function when sending the email.
To no avail. We received no reaction to the messages and not a single confirmation of receipt. The absence of read receipts when they are requested can only mean that whenever the Ministry of Justice received our message and the computer asked whether to send a read receipt (which is a standard feature), the recipient opted out, and thus the confirmation we requested was not sent to us.
Gradually, we began to realise that this persistent lack of response was not an unfortunate misunderstanding. We grew increasingly convinced that our letters were being deliberately ignored, and that receipts of our letters were intentionally not being sent. However, having a response from the email address of the Deputy Minister of Justice, D. Chernyshov, which confirmed his receipt of our request of 13 February, as well as tracking information from Ukrposhta’s website showing the delivery of our registered letter by proxy, we believed that proving a violation of the Law of Ukraine ‘On Access to Public Information’ in court in these two cases would be straightforward.
We were mistaken once again.
In court, the representative of the Ministry of Justice asserted that:
1) the fragments of email messages we presented were easy to forge and therefore did not prove that our letters had been received by the Ministry of Justice via email;
2) the receipt for the registered letter sent on 6 March did not contain information about the sender (meaning it might not have been sent by ‘Donetsk Memorial’);
3) furthermore, the contents of our registered letter of 6 March were unknown because there was no inventory of the enclosure (stating that we might have sent ‘a blank sheet of paper’ – these were the literal words of the Ministry of Justice representative!);
4) the address of the Ministry of Justice we specified in the letter – more precisely, the postal code 01601 – allegedly had nothing to do with the Ministry of Justice, as the only official address of the agency has the postal code 01001. Therefore, they claimed it was impossible to determine exactly at which post office our letter was located when received by proxy, but it was certainly not the post office serving the Ministry of Justice;
5) and finally, we did not provide proof of the receipt of our registered letter at the Ministry of Justice. How, in the opinion of the Ministry of Justice representative, we were supposed to obtain proof of our letter being received at the agency when they do not record this receipt themselves, and why official information from Ukrposhta’s website regarding the delivery of a registered letter by proxy is not considered such confirmation – we cannot imagine. Nor do we understand why the judge found such an absurd argument acceptable.
We were astonished to learn that for the Ministry of Justice, information from Ukrposhta’s website regarding the receipt of our registered letter by proxy was not proof, because the tracking details on the website indicated intermediate postal codes, none of which matched the index of the official address of the Ministry of Justice, 01001. This, they claimed, did not prove that our letter had been received at the Ministry of Justice itself. Subsequently, we sent several letters to the Ministry of Justice with advice of delivery, and these forms with the signatures of the Ministry of Justice representatives confirming receipt were returned to us from post office 01601 – that is, the very one which, according to the Ministry's representative, had nothing to do with the agency. Remarkably, the judge took this assertion from the Ministry of Justice seriously.
According to their representative, the correspondence with the Ministry of Justice employee, S., also did not confirm that our letter had been received by the Ministry of Justice. This correspondence was allegedly not proper evidence in the eyes of the Ministry of Justice because his email inbox was on ukr.net, whereas the Ministry of Justice officially uses only minjust.gov.ua addresses.
It is incomprehensible to us why official correspondence, which is an indisputable fact, with an employee of the Ministry of Justice via an email address other than minjust.gov.ua is not acceptable evidence.
It is worth emphasising that during the court hearings, the Ministry of Justice representative avoided discussing the actual fact of receiving our letters, focusing entirely on other details – the address, the content of the letter, the sender, etc. – that is, on factors that do not in any way prove that our letters were not received.
The Ministry of Justice representative provided no explanations or answers in court during discussions on whether the individual S., with whom ‘Donetsk Memorial’ had corresponded regarding the requests, actually worked at the Ministry of Justice; how this employee came to be aware of the content of the requests if the Ministry of Justice had not received them; or whether any attempts had been made to obtain his testimony regarding the correspondence with our organisation. And we do not understand why the court ignored such a strange position by the Ministry of Justice representative regarding the fact of communication with their employee.
The court did not attempt to clarify how the presence of tracking information on Ukrposhta’s website regarding the receipt of our letter by the Ministry of Justice should be assessed. It is completely unclear why the fact that a confirmation of receipt was sent from D. Chernyshov’s email address was ignored and left unevaluated by the court.
It is also strange that the court easily accommodated the Defendant and shifted the proceedings to a regime where ‘Donetsk Memorial’ had to provide proof of its actions (contrary to the provision of the law), while the court did not burden the Defendant with demands to prove any of its wild assumptions, such as the claim about a blank sheet of paper sent to the Ministry of Justice by registered post.
The court’s position can be understood as an attempt to save the lawbreaker at all costs, even in defiance of common sense and facts, using legal judicial mechanisms. This is why, in our opinion, the judge found all this nonsense from the Ministry of Justice representative acceptable and rejected our claim. The name of the district administrative court judge is Smolyi.
Regarding the preparation of responses by the Ministry of Justice to information requests, we must note a remarkable detail: to provide data on the results of the amnesty upon request – which consisted of just seven numbers – the Ministry of Justice specialists required 20 working days. They lacked the expertise to locate this volume of data within the agency in five days. This is indicative of the level of competence and capability of the Ministry of Justice staff and the heads of the agency, and of their genuine attitude towards providing information about their activities.
Taking into account that the Ministry of Justice representative in court was very keen on proof of our letters being received by the agency, we tried to submit an appeal in such a way as to obtain a receipt stamp from the Ministry of Justice. We consulted the Ministry of Justice website, which states:
‘A request for information may be submitted by the requester in person to the special structural unit that organises access to public information held by the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine in accordance with the established procedure, at the address: Room 102, 13 Horodetskoho Street, Kyiv, 01001.’
A representative of ‘Donetsk Memorial’ took two requests, which for reliability had been prepared both on behalf of the organisation and on behalf of an individual citizen, and visited the Ministry of Justice building at 13 Horodetskoho Street.
The security guard at the entrance, in response to the question: ‘Where can I submit letters to a representative of the Ministry of Justice and receive a stamp of receipt on the copy?’ replied: ‘There is the box – drop them in there.’
To the remark: ‘But is it possible to hand over the letter so that I get a stamp on the copy confirming it has definitely been received by the Ministry of Justice?’ he demurred: ‘No, you cannot hand over a letter like that here. Go to Rylskyi Lane.’
We emphasise that on the Ministry of Justice website, there is not a single word about the possibility of delivering correspondence to the Ministry of Justice in the building located in Rylskyi Lane!
Furthermore, it turned out that the information on the agency's website stating that ‘a request for information may be submitted by the requester in person to the special structural unit’ is untrue, because there is no special structural unit to which correspondence can be submitted in person at 13 Horodetskoho Street, Kyiv. Unless, of course, one considers the box into which you can drop your appeal without any confirmation of receipt and without any assurance of proper registration as such a unit.
During this visit, we learned that there was an opportunity to submit an appeal (with a receipt stamp!) at another location – the Ministry of Justice building in Rylskyi Lane. However, the representative of ‘Donetsk Memorial’ experienced firsthand the peculiar way in which this unlisted channel for receiving appeals operates when he went to the Ministry of Justice building in Rylskyi Lane. There, the security guard did not let him pass beyond the steps at the entrance to the building and explained that letters could be handed over to an employee of the chancellery, who had to be called down to the steps by phone.
He had to call and wait on the steps. After 5–6 minutes of waiting, a lady came out but refused to accept both letters. The reason: a letter from an organisation cannot be accepted without a correspondence register. Even if it is only a single letter, a register must be compiled, and it is on this register that the receipt stamp is placed. We emphasise: there are no such explanations on the Ministry of Justice website, and the address in Rylskyi Lane is not even mentioned.
As for letters from individual citizens, they had to be submitted not here, but to the unit of the Ministry of Justice located on Yevhena Sverstyuka Street, near Livoberezhna metro station.
The representative of ‘Donetsk Memorial’ had to return empty-handed. We were forced to compile a register and visit Rylskyi Lane once again.
This time, we had to wait on the steps of the Ministry of Justice building in Rylskyi Lane for over 15 minutes. This was because the chancellery employee who had been called by phone came out unnoticed, quietly and silently approached a person near the postbox (it turned out there was another petitioner), and after communicating with him, silently walked away. Since people are constantly entering and leaving the building, it was impossible to know that the woman who had silently emerged from the corridor was indeed the representative of the chancellery. Upon coming out, she did not announce aloud that she was from the chancellery, said nothing, gave no warning, and did not ask if anyone was waiting for her.
We had to call again and summon her. The second time, she came out irritated and declared with indignation: ‘You should have been standing by the box.’ But who could have known about such rules...
Such are the standards for receiving information requests from legal entities at the Ministry of Justice, and the Minister of Justice probably considers them to be European.
To submit an appeal on behalf of an individual, we had to travel to the Ministry of Justice unit on Ye. Sverstyuka Street, summon an employee through the security guard in the building, who came out, checked the identity document of the submitter, and only then accepted the letter and stamped the copy as received. One can imagine the consequences if the sender’s name on the letter had not matched the name of the person who brought it...
All of the above testifies to two important things:
1. At the Ministry of Justice, the procedure for receiving appeals from legal entities and citizens is extremely complex, over-regulated, and far removed not only from European standards but also from the standards that existed in the penitentiary service 4–5 years ago, and indeed far removed from common sense. This procedure sometimes looks like a mockery, because submitting an appeal and obtaining a receipt stamp requires significant effort and precise information as to where and in what form this must be done. river, the Ministry of Justice website does not contain a single word about the actual procedure for submitting appeals by legal entities and individuals with corresponding receipts, the differences between these procedures, the addresses to be contacted, or the requirement to carry an identity document.
2. At the Ministry of Justice, there is no clear tracking of appeals, nor is there any liability for failing to register them. Therefore, the practice of not registering appeals is widespread, particularly for those received by email. The benefit is obvious: no appeals mean no need or obligation to respond.
No one bears responsibility for this shambles, as it seems to suit both individual employees and the agency's leadership. Furthermore, one gets the impression that these incredible complications are deliberate. And this is why finding out how many prisoners there are in Ukraine can sometimes be incredibly difficult.
We are left with two questions for the Minister, though they are rather rhetorical:
How much longer will this Jesuitical procedure for receiving appeals persist at the Ministry of Justice?
And will anyone be held responsible for this entire shambles of failing to respond to appeals?