According to the author, the practice of extending a person’s time of imprisonment when their sentence is coming to an end is not a bad memory from Soviet times but quite common in today’s Ukraine

The police continue to beat people, even applying new forms and methods of beating, while the Prosecutor’s Office is good at finding ways of not bringing police officers to answer

In Ukrainian remand units or SIZO, people are falling ill and dying for want of medical assistance, human rights activists and lawyers warn

On 30 March the human rights organization Donetsk Memorial gave a press conference entitled “The Prison System: Progress scarcely noticeable” where it presented its fifth annual report Prisoners Rights in Ukraine – 2009

Oleksandr Halinsky was appointed in August last year. His appointment came with some degree of consultation with civic organizations and after a number of human rights organizations made direct appeals to the government to consider public opinion in their choice for this vital role.

The number of prisoners in the West of Ukraine who want to become students of higher educational institutes is increasing. The network of penal institutions from which some applications have come is also widening

With the entry into force of Law № 2460, penal administrations have the right to retrieve through the courts the cost of keeping all prisoners who are not working. And it is no longer important whether the penal institution (the State) is providing prisoners with the opportunity to earn money or not

All such correspondence should be sent or brought to the addressee on the date of its receipt without being looked at by the administration

Lawyers representing Yury Beketov, a remand prisoner in the Kyiv SIZO have stated that their client has not been provided with medical care which, according to European Court of Human Rights case law, can be deemed a form of torture

The criminal investigation is under Article 365 § 2 of the Criminal Code (exceeding power, accompanied by violence).

The new Head of the Department for the Execution of Sentences has promised cooperate with civic and human rights organizations in order to be able to receive information about negative elements in the work of the system

Mr Halinsky has up till now been in charge of the Odessa Regional Division of the Department for the Execution of Sentences

The Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union is calling on the Government to pay heed to human rights organizations and public opinion in appointing a new Head of the Penal System to enable vitally needed reform

After the inept management of the last 4 years and exodus of professionals from the service, it is vital that a new head for the Department is chosen wisely and with an eye to finally achieving badly needed reforms

The dismissal of Vasyl Koshchynets from his post as Head of the Department for the Execution of Sentences and rumours over who will take his place have prompted human rights organizations to renew their calls for serious reform of the penal system.

The Accounting Chamber has found that due to inefficient management, only one tenth of the tasks in the Programme for improving prisoners’ conditions had been fulfilled

According to the Human Rights Centre “Svoboda”, on 1 July approximately 84 prisoners from the maximum security unit at Penal Colony No. 58 Izyaslav in the Khmelnytsky region declared an indefinite hunger strike

Donetsk Memorial believes the surge in violence to be aimed at intimidating prisoners before the awaited visit by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture

Despite a positive trend towards lower numbers of prisoners, there were no noticeable improvements in the area of human rights during 2008, with the level of rights abuse remaining high

There are 2,800 prisoners eligible for amnesty however most often people simply have nowhere to go after their release