06 August 2020, Thursday, 18:46 175

Justice Ministry Starts Big Sale Of Prisons

Даша Зубкова

The Ministry of Justice has started a big sale of prisons.

Minister of Justice Denys Maliuska stated this at a briefing, Ukrainian News Agency reports.

"We are starting a big sale of prisons. This means that we are beginning to massively sell out real estate of the penitentiary system. We are talking about penitentiary facilities, remand prisons, correctional centers," he said.

The first facility offered for sale is the Irpin Correctional Center state institution (No.132).

Maliuska noted that at the moment 27 prisons in Ukraine are in a frozen state - they are not used, while money from the state budget on their maintenance and protection is spent.

He emphasized that each of them can be a potential facility for sale, interesting for investors.

Besides, the Minister of Justice indicated that a process has begun to optimize 8 facilities that are still functioning, but will also be frozen.

He noted that the convicts from them will be transported to other facilities for the execution of sentences.

"Such optimization became possible due to a decrease in the number of prisoners for various reasons, including the gradual liberalization of criminal legislation. But, the key point, the sale of prisons does not mean that we will reduce the number of prisoners, that we will release them, that we will not have enough room to keep the existing convicts. In fact, not. We have surplus property, we have a lot of it," Maliuska said.

He noted that at first it is planned to sell the frozen property, then - the construction of new infrastructure.

For example, it is planned to build remand prisons in the industrial zone of cities or outside the city, which will replace the remand prisons located in the city center.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, the Ministry of Justice began to open paid cells in the remand prison, and also launched the sale of gift certificates for using the services of paid cells in the remand prison.