In the approaches sent on behalf of the Attorney General, Alexandr Stoianoglo, and the Interim President of the Superior Council of Magistracy, Luiza Gafton, the People’s Advocate calls for the application during the state of emergency of alternative measures to detention for the categories of less serious crimes, targeting people aged over 50 and with chronic diseases (home placement, electronic monitoring, etc.), to ensure the right to life and health of people. For this purpose, the idea of reevaluating the situation of the persons under investigation within the criminal investigation isolators is advanced.
The People’s Advocate notes that such a decision is appropriate in the conditions of overcrowding the penitentiary institutions, the insufficiency of the medical staff in the subdivisions of the National Penitentiary Administration (NPA), including the poor hygiene in the detention institutions. Mihail Cotorobai reiterates the fact that he was informed about concrete situations in which employees from the penitentiary institutions have a fever, about the lack of the necessary equipment for the prevention and treatment of the new type Coronavirus in prisons, especially within the penitentiary institution no.16-Pruncul (penitentiary hospital).
Mihail Cotorobai mentions that, although the Ministry of Justice in collaboration with NPA has issued internal provisions to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic in the penitentiary institutions, these actions are not sufficient. Thus, it was ordered the identification of some spaces / cells for the placement of people in respect of which the court (s) admitted the prosecutors’ requests to apply the preventive measures to the preventive arrest. Officials of the People’s Advocate Office have found, however, that in the penitentiary institutions that have the status of isolator, there are not enough spaces / cells, and in some prisons they are in the same block where the persons are serving the sentences of imprisonment. Moreover, the cells intended for people placed in preventive detention are usually on the same floor.
In the approaches it is recalled that, according to the reports of the Ombudsman, the Committee for the Prevention of Torture [1] and the NPA, there are problems related to cell ventilation, which cannot be solved because of the old buildings. Thus, there is an imminent risk that the penitentiary institutions cannot prevent the spread of the disease, and the civil ones cannot ensure the treatment of the infected persons.
2020.03.24
Department for Human Rights Promotion and Communication
Tel .: 060002656
Department for the prevention of torture
Tel .: 060002641
