Monitoring visit to the State Institution ‘Kryvyi Rih Pre-trial Detention Centre No. 3’

On 8 November 2019, an HHPG monitoring group consisting of Volodymyr Hlushchenko, Maksym Revyakin, and Tamila Bespala carried out a visit to the State Institution ‘Kryvyi Rih Pre-trial Detention Centre No. 3’. This institution is located in the city of Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk region.

The institution has a sector for individuals sentenced to life imprisonment – 76 people.

No complaints regarding living conditions and food in the institution were received from the convicts.

However, two problems were identified that deserve special attention.

The biggest problem is the level of medical care, or more precisely – its absence. Despite the fact that the acting head of the medical unit, V.V. Kartashova, refused to provide the monitors with the logs regarding the medical unit’s activities, the head of the institution reported that the situation is critical. The reason for this is a shortage of staff, medical supplies, and the inaction of the head of the branch of the State Institution ‘Health Care Centre of the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine’ in the Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk regions.

Another urgent problem that exists in the institution, and from which the convicts’ relatives suffer, is the overly high prices for rooms for long-term visits with convicts. The relatives of the convicts, most of whom are pensioners, are unable to pay 1,650 hryvnias for accommodation.

It should be noted that the following day, the monitoring group visited another penitentiary institution, namely: State Institution ‘Kryvyi Rih Correctional Colony No. 80’, which is also located in Kryvyi Rih, and there the price for rooms is almost three times lower. Despite such prices for accommodation, in room No. 2, it was found that: the washing machine and toilet cistern are leaking; the burners, oven, and TV are faulty; and there is no kettle.

EU Project ‘Fight against torture, ill-treatment and impunity in Ukraine’