Legal aid for convicted women

As part of the implementation of the project ‘Ensuring Equal Access to Justice for Convicts and Released Persons through the Activities of a Regional Legal Aid Centre’, with financial support from the International Renaissance Foundation, work has begun at a legal aid centre for persons serving criminal sentences that do not involve deprivation of liberty, and for persons released from places of detention.
Within the framework of the centre’s stationary activities under the patronage of the municipal supervisory commission, the ‘public reception office’ of Chernihiv Correctional Colony No. 44 was reorganised into a legal aid centre for convicts, involving a wide range of lawyers from government bodies and local self-government, the Centre for Social Services for Children, Family and Youth, the regional justice administration, as well as lecturers and cadets of the Chernihiv Law College of the State Department of Ukraine for the Execution of Sentences, among others.
On 15 October 2008, the chief specialists of the Main Department of Justice in the Chernihiv Region — Inna Andriivna Kibets and Vita Anatoliivna Nevolko, chief specialist of the Chernihiv City Civil Registry Office Viktoriya Volodymyrivna Aksion, and Ihor Olehovych Yaroshevych — chief specialist of the State Enforcement Service, and lawyers from the charitable organisation ‘Chernihiv Women’s Human Rights Centre’, provided free legal assistance to convicted women serving sentences in the Chernihiv Women’s Colony.
More than 35 women received qualified legal assistance regarding the procedure for marriage registration and dissolution, the annulment of marriage, personal non-proprietary rights, the right to common marital property, methods for parents to fulfil their child support obligations (alimony), the duties of parents and children, the procedure for issuing powers of attorney and concluding sales contracts for land plots and residential houses (apartments), and compensation for damages caused by convicts to victims of a crime.
Precisely in today's difficult conditions of economic adversity, social maladjustment of the population, high crime rates, and the criminalisation of society, the work of increasing the level of legal awareness and legal culture of the population of Ukraine takes on particular importance, and to a significant extent, this also applies to persons sentenced to deprivation of liberty.
Legal aid for women serving sentences in the Chernihiv Correctional Colony, in our opinion, is extremely necessary, because it contributes to the formation of a legal culture among them, the development of the ability to use legal tools in practical activities, and will ensure their legal protection.

Valentyna Badyra, Director of the charitable organisation ‘Chernihiv Women’s Human Rights Centre’.