The Committee on Human Rights, National Minorities and International Relations held a Round Table Discussion "Women and Mothers with Babies in Prison"
18 March 2011, 11:40
Opening the round table discussion, Olena Bondarenko, Chairman of the Sub-Committee on the International Legal Issues and Gender Policy,
stated
that the purpose of the discussion was to talk about the state of
women and mothers with babies in prison, provision of their rights and needs, protection
of motherhood and childhood, and strengthening of legal regulation of this
sphere.
"Penal system was established and built for men mostly, so it represents "the men´s vision of the men´s problems in prison," said the reporter. She informed that penal colonies in Ukraine had been rebuilt from the colonies for men, not tailored for the special women´s needs based on the physiological and social (gender) differences. The architecture and organizational structure of the penal colonies are not suited to the women´s needs.
The reporter stressed that the international documents ratified by Ukraine and the European standards of life call for addressing the previously overlooked issues. Recommendations of the Council of Europe institutions pay special attention to the imprisonment of pregnant women and women with babies. These issues were discussed at the sitting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, when the Recommendation No. 1469 (2000) on Mothers and Babies in Prison was adopted.
According to the Recommendation, about 100 000 women including a great number of young mothers and their babies are serving their sentence in the penal institutions in the Council of Europe member states. The expert psychologists concluded that babies who stay with their mothers in prison experience difficulties with social adaptation, personality development, and growth.
The People´s Deputy stressed that the Committee of Ministers considered it axiomatic that member States make provision for a sufficient number of suitably varied community sanctions and measures, such as alternatives to pre-trial detention, probation as an independent sanction, the suspension of the enforcement of a sentence to imprisonment, community service, victim compensation, treatment orders for drug or alcohol misusing offenders or intensive supervision for appropriate categories of offenders (e.g. dangerous offenders). It is the constant view of the Committee of Ministers that deprivation of liberty should be regarded as a sanction of last resort and should therefore be provided for only where the seriousness of the offence would make any other sanction or measure clearly inadequate.
The participants drew attention to the lack of information about the children transferred to the children´s homes on achievement of three years of age, and the facilities for common accommodation of mothers and children in the penal colonies.