Going at large with God

Ukraine has over 110,000 people serving out sentences, and 40,000 more are in investigation wards. How can one ease the fate of these people and help them find their place in society after their release? The international conference of Orthodox prison clergy was looking for the answers to this question. Clergymen arrived in Kyiv from Armenia, Belarus, Belgium, Great Britain, Greece, Moldova, Poland, Russia and Switzerland in order to share their experiences of using the authority and capabilities of the Orthodox Church for the rehabilitation and resocialization of those who violated the law. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew greeted and edified the participants of the conference in his message.

Hierarchs were also invited to the round table in the Verkhovna Rada Committee for legislative support of law-enforcement activity. As the head of the committee Viktor Shvets pointed out while opening this meeting, “the church always influenced institutions of confinement spiritually and morally, and religion formed the penitentiary idea.” In the opinion of the people’s deputy, “the goals of the state and the church regarding convicts coincide: it is easy for people who realized their guilt to return to society and adjust to family and social relations.” “Only faith in God gives hope to people who found themselves in institutions of confinement, and opens prospects for the future,” Shvets said. At the same time, he pointed out that while in places of confinement convicts have all the possibilities to satisfy their religious needs, in investigatory wards “people actually cannot be involved in such church sacraments as confession and communion.”

The head of the State Penitentiary Service Oleksandr Lisitskov is confident that the renewal of the centuries-old traditions of the church’s care for people in places of confinement in Ukraine facilitates their spiritual revival, moral improvement and development. Lisitskov said that appropriate changes were introduced to the organization of the execution and completion of punishments after Ukraine joined the Council of Europe. For example, the European Prison Rules, in particular, determine that the “objective of the regime of prisoner treatment is the support of their physical health and also the development of their vocation and abilities which will help them return to society as law-abiding citizens.” According to Lisitskov, the penitentiary system of Ukraine borrowed this and other norms as well. But the humanization of the corresponding domestic legislation should be continued, the general supposes, giving the clergymen a special status that will make them equal with the personnel of these institutions.

Doctor of Law Sofia Lykhova (Ukraine) appealed to priests to pay more attention not only to prisoners but also to those who guard them, since they have no less need for God’s Word than the convicts. Schvets supported her in this, pointing out that the personnel of prisons and investigatory wards (about 50,000 people work in the Ukraine’s penitentiary system) come out only after the end of their working day – they actually spend the rest of their time behind bars, too. Reacting to Lykhova’s suggestion to have one or several chaplains in each reformatory institution, he promised to think about it.

Speaking to journalists after the end of the round table, Shvets pointed out that the Ukrainian penitentiary system needs fundamental reform, since it is still in many ways Soviet. “It is cruel, inhuman and doesn’t ensure its main function – reeducation,” the head of the committee candidly admitted. The Day asked him why the necessary changes to the penitentiary service were not carried out in the course of the reform of the judicial system in Ukraine. “Everyone admitted already that the judicial reform in Ukraine was implemented inefficiently,” the people’s deputy answered. “We had only a semblance of reform; it was actually of political-legal character.”