On 20 December 2010, Training Sessions Were Held for Minors Held in the Chernihiv Pre-Trial Detention Centre

Within the framework of the project “Ensuring Access to Justice for Convicted Women, Imprisoned Minors, and Persons Released from Places of Detention through the Provision of Legal Aid”, training sessions were held in the Chernihiv Pre-Trial Detention Centre for minors held there

In pre-trial detention centres, the most vulnerable category of prisoners is minors, both in terms of legal self-defence and in terms of knowing their rights and obligations during their detention in this institution. Lack of knowledge of their rights and obligations, combined with poor knowledge of the internal regulations of these facilities, often leads to the emergence of conflict situations.
Unfortunately, anti-social standards of behaviour and the “values” of criminal subculture have become widespread in the adolescent environment. An extreme aggressiveness has become a general trait of minors who have committed crimes. Most of them grew up and were raised in incomplete and disadvantaged families. Familiarity with alcohol and drugs occurred at an early age.
Taking into account the biological, psychological, and social characteristics of minors, the law on criminal liability ensures their enhanced criminal-legal protection; it also provides for specific features regarding holding them accountable, releasing them from liability, sentencing, releasing them from punishment, and serving their sentences. This position of the state is based on international legal acts, in particular the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, the Preamble to which states that minors need special care and protection, including appropriate legal protection.
Members of the charitable organisation “Chernihiv Women's Human Rights Centre” see their task as not only providing minors with certain legal knowledge and an understanding of the law but also consider it necessary to contribute to forming their readiness for law-abiding behaviour in society based on a respectful attitude towards the law.
On 20 December 2010, representatives of the charitable organisation “Chernihiv Women's Human Rights Centre”, together with the Main Department of Justice in the Chernihiv region and the Chernihiv City Centre for Social Services for Family, Children, and Youth, prepared and conducted training sessions with various categories of minors held in the Chernihiv Pre-Trial Detention Centre on the topic “Specifics of Serving Sentences in the Form of Imprisonment by Minors”:

- with those whose sentences have entered into legal force, during which the convicts were familiarised with the specifics of serving sentences in reformatories, the application of parole from punishment, and being kept in reformatories after reaching 18 years of age.

- and with minors whose criminal cases are being investigated and are under consideration in judicial bodies — regarding the rights and guarantees of persons taken into custody. They were familiarised with the obligations of inmates provided for by current legislation and the legal consequences of non-compliance with rules of conduct.

Oleksandr Antonenko, who had problems with the law, multiple convictions, and used drugs, but set himself on the path to correction and returned to an accepted socio-normative life, spoke before the minors.
Representatives of the charitable organisation presented gifts to the minors held in the Chernihiv Pre-Trial Detention Centre in honour of St. Nicholas Day.


V. Badyra, Director of the charitable organisation “Chernihiv Women's Human Rights Centre”