Kyiv’s Detention Center to Maintain European Standards
The pretrial detention center in Kyiv’s Podil was visited last Thursday by Verkhovna Rada Human Rights Ombudsperson Nina Karpachova was notorious just a few years ago for almost inhuman conditions. In some cells, inmates had to sleep by turns because the 157-bunk jail was in fact crammed with up to 350 detainees who were, moreover, allowed only one outdoor exercise every two or three days. The situation has changed today and is not so bad, Ms. Karpachova claims: the cells, although still overcrowded, house up to 10-15 persons. This occurs, according to jail superintendent Vasyl Melnychenko, because it is sometimes impossible to transfer a detainee from this institution to what is known as SIZO (investigation period jail) within ten days, as the law requires, for such prosaic and paradoxical reasons as non-arrival of escort (sorry, no gas) or even this: on Sundays, when the Lukyanivska SIZO is on holiday, Kyiv’s pretrial centers continue to receive detainees.
According to Ms. Karpachova, the contemporary detention center differs somewhat from just a year ago. One story, completely renovated, “is close to European standards,” the Ombudswoman asserts. At closer examination, the “European standards” turned out to be four-to-six-man cells with two-tier bunks, a toilet and even, as police chiefs tried to assure journalists and the Ombudsperson, hot water. The latter was not verified, though, for neither the journalists nor those on the receiving end were exactly bursting to do so. In the words of Viktor Ratushniak, deputy chief of the Kyiv city police, additional outdoor exercise grounds have been set up, which thus allows all inmates to take a one-hour outdoor exercise every day. All the improvements in the detention center were proudly demonstrated to Ms. Karpachova and — reluctantly, with investigation secrecy as the excuse — to journalists. For example, the horde of those who write and take photographs, but who failed to properly appreciate such “European standards,” was shown rather damp cells on the other floors without televisions, hot water, or even bunks where the inmates had to sleep on a flat wooden floor. It is impossible, Mr. Ratushniak says, to renovate all the floors simultaneously because of the chronic shortage of funds, while the 266 million hryvnias provided in the 2002 budget for improving conditions in pretrial detention facilities exist, in his words, on paper only. The state allots just 4.75 hryvnias a day for an inmate’s meals.
Another judicial problem which, according to Ms. Karpachova, contributes to the overcrowding of cells is the too frequent use of arrest as a preventive measure. And, in the words of Tetiana Onyshchuk, assistant to the Kyiv city chief prosecutor, who was also present, the situation did not change radically when the new Criminal Code empowered the courts to issue arrest warrants. All this, the Human Rights Ombudswoman says, causes hard core criminals to be kept in the same pretrial cells together with alimony deadbeats. “It is possible to significantly reduce the occupancy of pretrial detention facilities by a wider application of such preventive measures as a written pledge to stay and as a result, to improve jail conditions,” Ms. Karpachova emphasized.
