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Lawyer: Number Of 'Prison Population' In Belarus Needs Reduction To Comply With European Norms

Lawyer: Number Of 'Prison Population' In Belarus Needs Reduction To Comply With European Norms
Mikhail Pastukhou

How can Belarusian prisoners protect themselves?

The editor's office of Svobodnye Novosti received a letter from a group of convicts from the penal colony #20, located near Mazyr (the convicts did indicate their names, but asked not to publish them). Here is what they write:

“By our letter we want to draw the public attention to the chaos that is happening in the colonies and prisons. Let's start by order. From the moment of arrival at the colony, the administration must provide the new arrivals with clothing allowances for the season. Instead, we are forced to stand in the yard for hours, including in freezing weather and rain. Also, what is this marching from the quarantine to the dining room for? Why do we have to carry food in plates and pans for 250 meters? After all, after such a walk the food gets cold.

Further - about sanitation. There are 140 to 160 people in the detachments. 6 urinals, 6 latrines (holes in the floor), and 10 sinks for all. After getting up at 6 o'clock, everyone rushes to the toilet, because at 6.10 the inmates are supposed to leave the room and go out for a walk. It lasts only 10 minutes. Why such a limit? A few minutes late - and a violation report can be made.

They also charge us for light, water, heating, feeding. We are forced to eat in the dining room in the outerwear. Is that normal?

And what about our production? We work for 5 - 10 rubles. The workplaces are in terrible state. No one respects safety and sanitation standards.

How to protect ourselves in this closed area? ”

Doctor of legal sciences, professor Mikhail Pastukhou comments:

- Yes, the conditions of serving the sentence in prisons remain extremely harsh. According to those who went through the “prison universities”, there is nothing romantic there: hard regime, unskilled labor, stench, dirt and time, which turned into a nightmare.

We can make judgements about the life of Belarusian convicts from the materials on the Internet, as well as from prison literature. For example, what Ihar Alinevich wrote in his book “Going to Magadan”: “They banned sockets in the residential sections, there are no doors on the toilets. They prohibited ceramic dishes, confiscated electric kettles. You cannot wear a wool sweater, for the winter and summer there's one model of shoes, there is no mid-season wear - no rain coat, or a jacket, or a coat. It's either a robe or a padded jacket. What can I say - I can’t even buy a toothbrush for the third month, because there is none. ”

It should be noted that Belarus in terms of the number of prisoners per 100 thousand population in 2016 occupied the 14th place in the world with the number of inmates being 34.6 thousand people. In 19 colonies, 27.5 thousand convicts were held, in three prisons - 549 people, in the remand prisons - 6.3 thousand prisoners. The Belarusian authorities do not show in their reports the number of persons sentenced to arrest and to restriction of freedom. And this is an additional army of convicts. Thus, according to the data of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Belarus, in 2018, 7507 people were subjected to punishment in the form of arrest, and 7702 people were subject to restriction of freedom.

In my opinion, the questions posed in the letter require a solution. One of such decisions could be the transfer of the system of institutions for serving criminal sentences under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice. However, in the foreseeable future this is unlikely to happen, since the Ministry of Justice as a civil department is not ready for such a “gift”. Nevertheless, the Department for the Execution of Sentences should be removed from the subordination of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and carry out a fundamental reorganization. At the head of this department should be a civilian, preferably from among those who have been to “places not so remote” and knows what needs to be changed and how.

The most important thing is to improve the conditions of stay in the places of detention. There are international standards for this: the Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, adopted at the first UN Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders of 1955, and the European Penitentiary Rules, adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on February 12, 1987.

It is obvious that the number of prison population should be reduced to European standards, at least half of the current figure. It is easy to do this - through amnesty, as well as through the review of criminal cases. Some prisons can be closed or turned into museums. In my opinion, such a role can be claimed by the building of the remand prison #1 in Minsk and the Hrodna prison. The goal of prison reform should not only be to improve the living conditions of convicts, but also a significant change in their status. The places of deprivation of liberty should be under the control of the society, deputies, human rights activists, as well as international structures.

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