Aren't we in less secure society? Year by year we observe more and more prisoners. But not so much justice at all. The prison overcrowding crisis reveals the urgent need for changes in society, in criminal and penal laws. Prison system has become a hostage to the public and political processes in Ukraine, and then - a hostage of system of law enforcement agencies and judiciary. Responsibility, rehabilitation, and restoration ought to become the foundation for necessary reform."Even though the prison system in Ukraine is called penitentiary it remains rather repressive owing to the whole practice of justice and rules in administering the law," - says Fr. Constantin Panteley, head of the Office for Penitentiary Pastoral Care, to correspondent of the UGCC Department of Information, - "and, it seems to me, this is a desire of any society now - to punish offenders."
The Church teaches: the lawful public authority has a duty to exercise punishments according to the seriousness of crimes committed. But inprisonment is not just a punishment for a crime in Ukraine. It is used as a repressive apparatus for revenge so that a person completely loses his dignity, instead of being cleansed, changed for the better. The Ukrainian society loses now its sense of true security because it has such a criminal justice system where, quite often, offenders are not rehabilitated and victims are ignored.
“Our criminal justice system is as follows: in the Old Testament it was an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; now it’s a jaw for a tooth, a head for an eye. This is the kind of system of punishment that exists. It seems that we have a basic principle of justice – revenge. Nobody thinks about how to call those people to repentance, to a better life, to give them a chance to mend, - said Fr. Constantin, - As a society we must strive to reach out to victims and reject vengeance; restore a sense of community and resist the violence that has surrounded so much of our culture."
According to Fr. Constantin, there are more than 40,000 people right now in remand prisons. For comparison, in 2007 there were 32,000 people. According to him, the most important principle is being violated in Ukraine that a detention could not be used just to obtain witnesses from a person against himself.
He names only one reason why someone is unjustly detained – “so that a man signs all the papers against himself. This is a method of exquisite torture, because during the judicial investigation, which extends for a long time, usually years, people are so exhausted from waiting for the justice that they sign any papers to recognize accusation, to become free at last, let’s say, for the next half a year.”
“Because prisons are overcrowded, there is such a situation – physically, the prison system is not able to respond to the needs of all detainees. Because after being locked up, all people, even if they were healthy, start to have health problems. This is due primarily to the tight conditions and because time for walking is shortened. The prison system has limited funding, so, for example, the mentally ill, who should get tranquilizers or other drugs to calm their nervous systems, do not get them. The same applies to infectious patients. Health aides often have to work with only a handful of pills and saline. And that’s all! But it’s not because the prison service is so bad; even if we had a European judicial system, with so many prisoners we would still need to spend half the state budget. Therefore, to solve the problem we must first look at the reasons why our prisons are overcrowded,” - said Fr. Constantin.
The main reason, in his opinion, is the imperfection of the judicial system in general and overcrowded prisons in particular.
UGCC Information Department
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