page_title: Ukraine prison ministry
section_title: Prison system of Ukraine
hierarchical_section_title: Ukraine prison ministry / Prison system of Ukraine
caption_attribution_description: English: Emblem of the State Department of Ukraine for Execution of Punishment
context_page_description: After the fall of the Soviet Union, the independent Ukrainian country underwent tremendous stress when it shifted from a centrally planned economy to a free market system. Those changes, led by the post-communist oligarchy, caused an increasing number of impoverished and homeless people in Ukraine during 1990s. The crime rate and the prison population grew until 2001. Changes in penal policy of the Ukrainian government started after the pontifical visit of Pope John Paul II to Ukraine.
  In 2010–2011 the number of remand prisoners increased sharply up to 45,000. Beginning in July 2012, the prison population fell from 154,000 to 79,750 before 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine. As a matter of fact, the Donbas has 20% of all prisons functioning in Ukraine. As a heritage of the Soviet period, Donetsk and Lugansk regions have 20 and 16 prison facilities respectively, twice more than any other region in Ukraine. Convicts were released without any government programs for rehabilitation, destabilizing these regions.
  During the 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine, hundreds of convicts from prisons in Donbas were armed by the pro-Russian militants.
context_section_description: "The State has the twofold responsibility about crime and punishment: to discourage behavior that is harmful to human rights and the fundamental norms of civil life, and to repair, through the penal system, the disorder created by criminal activity. Judicial and penal institutions play a fundamental role in protecting citizens and safeguarding the common good. By their very nature these institutions must contribute to the rehabilitation of offenders."
  The legal bases of the organization and activity of the Prison System of Ukraine are determined by the law «On the State Criminal-executive Service of Ukraine» (July 20, 2005). 
  It sets, in particular, the organizational structure of this service, which consists of three levels: central (central body of the executive authority on implementation of punishments and probation, this is the State Criminal-executive Service of Ukraine under leadership of Ministry of Justice of Ukraine), regional (6 territorial bodies of management), local (penitentiary facilities, pre-trial prisons (so called investigation isolators) and units of Probation).
  The country's prison system was the responsibility of the Ministry of Internal Affairs until 1998, when it was placed under the newly created State Penal Department. In December 2010 it was reorganized as the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine, which is directed by the Ministry of Justice. It is responsible for the execution of criminal sentences within the Ukrainian prison system. There are 177 penal institutions in Ukraine (for January 1, 2015 - 31 pre-trial detention prisons, 139 penal facilities of different levels of security, six corrective penal settlements for minors). On 1 January 2015, the prison population numbered 73,431 people (162 prisoners per 100,000 people, down from 347 per 100,000 people in July 2011). Approximately one-sixth are remanded prisoners. The Department of Criminal Executive Inspection has 87,581 convicts who are sentenced to criminal punishments alternative to imprisonment. In February 2000, Ukraine abolished the death penalty, which had been abandoned since March 1997. 1,906 inmates are sentenced to life imprisonment. Development of the State Probation Service has begun.
  The Criminal Executive Service of Ukraine lost control of four Crimean prisons in March 2014 when Russia occupied and annexed Crimea. The functioning of 29 prisons in militant-controlled areas of Donbass deteriorated after the 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine, with lack of food and drinking water affecting 16,200 inmates. In October 2014, insurgents agreed on a green corridor for the evacuation of women from a destroyed prison in the Lugansk region.
  On 18 May, 2016, the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine abolished the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine and has taken responsibility for national prison system in Ukraine.
caption: The symbol of the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine
exif: {}