Belarusian prisons are more than full

The International Centre for Penitentiary Research has announced that Belarus currently holds the 14^th place in the world in the number of prisoners. It’s a serious achievement for our country, because for years we were in top 10 “world leaders”: we used to be fifth and even third. But, after a short celebration of the success, the “People’s Freedom” decided to find out, how did we manage such a breakthrough.

The Minister states

This July, during a “round table discussion”, organized by “SB: Belarus Today” (major governmental-owned newspaper – transl.), the Minister of Justice Vladimir Naumov officially stated: there are approximately 37 thousand people in prison in Belarus. “This is quite a lot”, – the official said. Because, we agree, this number is much less than before.

A month later, in August, during an online conference in Belteleradiocompany Naumov corrected the data and told that there are 34 thousand people, imprisoned. By the way, the minister forecasted that we will be at the end of the top ten of the world “prison chart”. He was surprisingly right. Because, though we were among the leaders in Europe (after Russia), but came out 14^th in the world. It is really a great achievement for Belarus: last year, our country was the third after only the US and, again, Russia.

So, it isn’t surprising that Natalya Petkevich, Deputy Head of the President’s Administration, has recently continued to proudly tell everybody about this breakthrough. While presenting an amnesty bill, according to which the amnesty will not affect everybody (before, they made their sentences one year shorter) to the “legislators”, she said: “The situation with prisons has dramatically changed. The representatives has discussed the matter of long-term imprisonment for small crimes. There really was such a practice. And I was upset by that as well. But a great deal of work has been done on legislation changes and sanctions corrections depending on the seriousness of the crime. The legislation has changed for the best…” As understood from the speech of the head lawyer of the President’s Administration, this is the reason why we don’t need to free many people. So the amnesty came out to be somewhat smaller.

Perhaps, we really missed the moment, when our law enforcement system became more humane…

Penitentiary Department

There was a green parrot named Amnesty in the office of the Head of the Penitentiary Department Vladimir Kovchur (now former Head – charter97.org). A nice birdie, I hope it still is in good health. Vladimir Kovchur has always been a pro-amnesty man, because he knew very well about the “inhabitance” of the institutions, he’s in charge of. A couple years ago he even published a long article in “Belarusian Justice” magazine, where he wrote that the limit of all the establishments of the system is 32,9 thousand people, and, naturally, agreed that precisely the amnesties are what saves the situation.

This time Kovchur said nothing about the coming amnesty and in general, all this year no journalist was able to get to him. Using our channels, we tried to find out, what happened, and stumbled across an unusual situation.

Vladimir Kovchur has disappeared for the press after a big interview in “Belarusian Police” magazine, publiched this March. And that was, to tell the truth, a confession.

“Today there are over 48 thousand people in penitentiary institutions. More than 45 thousand – in prisons and temporary isolators, about three thousand prisoners in prison hospitals. 126 serve life sentence. Besides that there are eight thousand people in open type penitentiary establishments,” – said Vladimir Kovchur. It comes out that this May there were more than 56 thousand people in penitentiary institutions.

So why three months later, in July, the Minister for Justice named a much smaller number? What had happened in our legislation or our penitentiary system? Over 20 thousand prisoners were freed and nobody noted anything? Perhaps, Kovchur is silent because he doesn’t know the answers to these questions.

Let’s find out ourselves.

This summer the Criminal Code was enlarged by several new articles. But they still mean imprisonment for the offenders (e.g. there is a punishment for unlawful use or spreading of the information about the financial activities of valuable papers’ emitter, there is a “term” for unlawful operations with debt agreements). There are new crimes now (for example, you can be punished for failure to comply with the security rules while working with genetically engineered organisms). A punishment for embezzlement was made stricter – it is now more than just a fine or community service work… It seems, no signs of a sudden “softening” of punishments, in fact, quite the contrary. And, naturally, we haven’t found any changes, which can allow large numbers of people to leave prisons. 

Human rights activists don’t know anything either

“Were there any changes in Belarusian legislation in 2007 in the principles of serving the prison term, which can allow large masses of people to get freed?” – I ask the vice-president of the World Human Rights Federation Ales Belyatsky. “No, there are no signs of it. After passing the amnesty bill, perhaps in the first quarter of 2008, a small number of prisoners will be released. But until then nothing like that could happen,” – Belyatsky states.

“There can’t be a serious change in number of prisoners, – Igor Rynkevich, a former lawyer and a human rights activist supports his colleague. – There was no liberalization of law, the prisons as we know from the people there, are more than full”.

It comes out that Naumov just gave incomplete information. And the international organizations, naturally, base all their research on official data. As a result, the country has improved its position without actually changing anything.

But we still don’t want to believe that the Ministry of Justice is so frivolously playing not just with numbers, but with people’s lives. So, let’s try to approach the problem from a different angle, for all the prisoners go to prisons after they have been given their sentence in court…

“The longest term ever”

The President of the High Court Valentin Sukalo traditionally holds a press-conference in the beginning of the year to sum up the results of the previous. Speaking about 2006, he said that “the number of processes in courts is shocking. In 2000 there were 59.862 people, proved guilty of criminal offences, and in 2006 – 71.470”, – stated the head judge of the country.

So, this way also shows growth, an a major one. According to the statistics, we are some kind of a criminal nation. There are only 9,7 million of Belarusians, and 1,5 million of them are children. In other words, almost each hundredth adult citizen of our country became a criminal last year. It is an impossible result that one can’t believe. But the President of the High court surely knows what he’s talking about. 

But at the same time Sukalo calmed the journalists: “In the structure of the means of criminal punishment imprisonment made up only 23% and 10 years ago it was 36,5%. It is the first time for many years that community service work has outgrown the imprisonment and made up 25%”.

In fact, after some calculations, nothing is calming in this message. Looks like last year over 16 thousand people were put behind bars. It seems, one gets freed and there are five in line to take his spot. Though, recently the officials have openly forecasted even possible closing off several prisons because of the lessening of the numbers of “special contingent”. Great hopes were put on 2003 and 2005 amendments to the Criminal Code, when punishments for small crimes were lowered and some of them even disappeared from the CC. “Nobody will go to jail for stealing a chicken”, – the lawmakers proudly stated. Perhaps, nobody is in prison now for stealing a chicken or stealing a bowl of soup from an ex-wife. But the terms were made bigger for those, who already had pretty long ones.

“In compliance with the new Criminal Code the average term of punishment became 2–2,5 years longer compared to 2001, – states Vladimir Kovchur, – and now in certain types of regime is more than eight years”. He estimates our terms as “very long, the longest term ever”.

Valentin Sukalo is less certain, but he also admits: “Our courts suffer not from lack of strictness, but from its excess”.

The judges are really rough! In the first half of the year the percentage of people, put in jail grew compared to the last year. So while thousands of people rot behind bars, the officials talk about how they understand the inadequacy of the situation. And the evil old joke about a new way of extreme tourism is still understandable: “If you want to spend some time in jail – go to Belarus”.

Letters from far away

I have recently received a letter from prison by a very well-known person (I won’t name him in order not to make his life harder). That’s what he writes about the real prison life: “In the last day of the spring session (of the “House of Representatives”, which could have passed the bill, but in the last moment it was taken back to the President’s Administration for reworking – auth.) some people have hoped that the amnesty will be announced by the 3^rd of July. But nothing was said about it on the radio. One of the prisoners cut his throat because of the stress. They didn’t manage to save him. They say, there were more such cases, but don’t know if it’s really so, consider this rumors. There were no other topics to discuss in our institution – amnesty only. It is stupid to say, it isn’t needed. All of the “zones” (jargon name for prison – transl.) are either full or over the limits. The conditions are horrible. The heating is still off (the letter was written on the 9^th of November, it was snowing that day – auth.). The state tries to save money on everything. It’s very cold. And this is so, minding that there’s less than one square meter per person, while the law requires it to be at least two. It is like a bee hive. It looks like our country is inhabited only by criminals. There’s no space in prison, the bunk beds are “three-storey”. There are two-three times more people in each cell than it is supposed to be. Once I’ve heard on radio that new norms of feeding in penitentiary institutions were approved and now each prisoner must receive 90 grams of meat and 100 grams of fish without heads. Of course, nothing is given. The state tries to save on everything. In spring they turned off the electricity: can’t even read or drink some hot water…

I’ve talked to people as you asked: who was in which prison and how many people are kept there. We calculated the total number and it was over 60 thousand. And that is without counting the temporary isolators, prison hospitals and people being transported to jail…”

Yekaterina Sadovskaya, who has been freed from Gomel prison this year, also speaks about the excessive numbers of people in jail. She witnessed the women being placed in corridors, though it is against all the rules of internal regime. But, according to the human rights activist, the CF-4 (correctional facility – transl.) is “overflowing”.

There is only one place, where no horrifying news came from – “Vitba-3” CF, where Alexander Kozulin (well-known Belarusian politician, now a political prisoner) serves his term. But we’ve received the information that many former policemen have been sent here, perhaps, they are going to make it a so-called “red zone”. Well, this CF will likely exceed the planned limits too.

The information, gathered by our voluntary assistants, will be sent to human rights groups for double-checking. But even according to Vladimir Kovchur’s statistics there are 577 convicts per 100 thousand citizens. And that means we are among the leaders of the shameful chart.

Compare it to the other European states. Ukraine – 345, Estonia – 333, Latvia – 292, Georgia – 276, – Moldova – 247, Poland – 239, Lithuania – 235, Azerbaijan – 202. By  the way, the lowest result among the European nations is in Iceland (37), and the lowest in the world (11) – Australia. So, there are countries, which live practically with no prisons. And live pretty well.

But our state has made us criminals. And it is the stupid law, because of which the “average term is the highest ever” according to Vladimir Kovchur, that is the cause. Vladimir Kovchur knows what he’s talking about –  he has been in the system for decades. And the head of the PD tells about the growth in the number of convicts as contrary to the Minister of Justice: “We widely use the replacement of punishment with less severe and free many people before they serve the full sentence (about 70% get freed this way) there is a 3,5 thousand people growth”.

Moloch

The veterans of the penitentiary system remember the soviet times. The head of the PD confessed: “It used to be a time when we had only 14 thousand convicted and 7 thousand in temporary isolators. Two or three thousand people were sent to the Far North to cut trees (two or three years on average). After the Union collapsed, approximately six thousand were returned home. It comes out that it is possible to have the number below 30 thousand. Have our society become criminal enough to make us keep 50-60 thousand people in jails?”

Of course, Belarusians weren’t and aren’t the nation of criminals. Prison is just the easiest way of solving many problems. A way of draining money and property from the businessmen, of draining the revolutionary thoughts from the opposition politicians. It is an effective way of spreading fear. A traditional method of the dictatorships. It is, in the end, a cheap workforce. At least the data on the salaries in prison, announced less than month ago by the “On Guard” police newspaper are as follows: the best situation is in women’s colony in Gomel – almost 130 thousand BYR (50 EUR), CF-2 (Bobruisk) – 43 thousand, “Vitba-3” – 42 thousand, CF-5 (Ivatsevichy) – 39 thousand, CF-22 (the so-called “Wolves’ Holes” near Ivatsevichy) – 38, CF-24 (CF for women in Rechitsa district) – 36 thousand BYR… And our prisons produce furniture, machinery, there are woodworking facilities there, there are clothing factories, working for army and the police; prisoners are the main manpower in many kolkhozes (collective farming communities – transl.)… And to have such slaves for longer, the state has invented a new “thing”: if you won’t repay the damage, you’ve dealt, no amnesty will be valid for you. And who could “repay the damage” – with such a salary? Only those, who stole millions. That’s how just our justice is. That is the state for the people.

http://www.charter97.org/be/news/2007/11/15/1592/