The bill adopted by the Parliament and submitted by the Cabinet of Ministers “On Amendments to Article 72 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine concerning improvement of the procedure for considering duration of pretrial detention” does not provide incentives for reforming the prison service. This was stated by the member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Legislative Support of Law Enforcement, MP from UKROP Vitaliy Kupriy on February 23.
“Governmental bill is a veiled attempt to abolish the so-called Savchenko law. It neglects completely the incentives to reform the prison system and to change inhuman conditions in which people are kept in detention,” said Vitaliy Kupriy.
According to the MP, governmental bill fully abolishes the mechanism of considering one day of pretrial detention as two days of detention sentence for the persons suspected of committing grave and especially grave crimes. At the same time suspected of minor crimes can rarely get into pre-trial detention centers, as according to the Criminal Procedure Code they can be released on bail. Therefore, the cases when the law proposed by the Cabinet of Ministers is applied will be very rare or it will not work at all.
According to Vitaly Kupriy, an alternative bill of his authorship could be much more effective, as it provides considering of imprisonment term by the formula “one to two” only in case of exceeding pretrial investigation period – 6 months for minor crimes and 12 months for grave and especially grave crimes.
“If the investigation has failed to comply with the rules of criminal procedure and because of this a person is kept in detention, it is absolutely illegal. In this case, the victim should get compensation and the state is to be held accountable,” said Vitaliy Kupriy.
