Condemned to agony: problems regarding release from penal institutions due to serious illness
A round table, organised by the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG), took place at the Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, dedicated to the issues of medical care and the high mortality rate of convicts due to protracted judicial processes and a lack of diagnosis.
The event was attended by representatives of the Commissioner’s Secretariat, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Ministry of Justice, and the Health Care Centre of the State Penitentiary Service. Experts emphasised that oncological diseases in prisoners are usually detected at the final stages, and the lack of proper care and palliative treatment leads to people dying in their cells, despite applications to the ECHR under Rule 39.
There is no opportunity to provide treatment…
KHPG programme coordinator Andrii Didenko noted that there is not a single closed facility in Ukraine for the treatment of cancer-stricken convicts, and civilian hospitals do not accept them. Due to the mobilisation of doctors and a lack of funds for CT/MRI scans, specialised departments within the State Penitentiary Service system are being closed. Lawyer Hanna Ovdienko highlighted the problem of a lack of licences for narcotic pain relief in colonies: palliative patients suffer from unbearable pain for years, receiving care only from other convicts.
There is no desire to grant release…
Although the law provides for the release of the critically ill (Art. 84 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine), the processes take months. The prosecutor’s office systematically objects to release, and judges are mainly guided by outdated clarifications from 1973 instead of ECHR practice.
KHPG research into 1,500 court rulings revealed that in only 5.57% of cases do judges refer to the practice of the European Court, whereas in 82% they agree with the prosecutor’s position. Following the results of the round table, a resolution was prepared with proposals to change the regulatory framework to facilitate the procedure for releasing convicts due to serious illnesses.