TORTURE AND ILL-TREATMENT OF CHILDREN IN UKRAINE

Section 2Administrative standards and proceduresThe President’s Representative on the Rights of the Child, Yury Pavlenkohas mentioned the unwarrantedly long periods that minors are held in SIZO.“Over the last nine months of speaking with children when I visited SIZO, I discoveredthat the majority of children have been there for more than a year.Some for more than two years, while one has been there for around threeyears. That is, while the criminal investigation is underway, the child is in prison”.Yury Pavlenko added that the majority of children both in SIZO, and in colonies,are there for minor offences. 40There are not just isolated cases with tragic results of holding peoplein custody in SIZO. According to Yevhen Zakharov, Head of the Kharkiv HumanRights Group, in 2011 there were a number of deaths in SIZO.“Just in the last two weeks in Ukraine there have been three deaths ofyoung men being held in custody. One was in the Lukyanivsk SIZO; the secondin the police ITT in the Khmelnytski oblast; and the third at an interrogationin a police station in Sumy. Just in the last six months the number of deaths inSIZO has risen by 45%” 41 .The general conditions in educational colonies of the State PenitentiaryService of convicted minors (space per prisoner) are similar to the conditionsfor adults. For minors held in corrective colonies, separate norms are envisaged42 , according to which, unlike adults, minors should have sports clothingand shoes, as well as summer clothing.Article 118 of the Penal Code states that people sentenced to terms of imprisonmentshould work in places and on tasks designated by the prison colonyadministration, taking into consideration gender, aim, ability to work; stateof health; and speciality. At present there are no openly available normativelegal acts regulating the particular features of work and / or study of childrenserving sentences in corrective colonies.An Order 43 regulates the organization and planning of the production process;engagement of prisoners in socially useful work; organizing the records40 http://zn.ua/SOCIETY/v_ukrainskih_sizo_po_2-3_goda_bez_suda_derzhat_detey.html41 http://censor.net.ua/resonance/195734/epidemiya_smerti_kak_vyjit_v_militsii_i_sizo42 Norms of ownership of material possessions, adopted by Justice Ministry Order from20.02.2012 No. 280/5.43 “Rules of Procedure for organizing production activities and engaging prisoners in sociallyuseful work at enterprises of corrective centres, corrective and corrective colonies of theState Penal Service, adopted by Justice Ministry Order from 03.01.2013 р. No. 26/5.109