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On February 02, 2026, the Novozavodskyi District Court of Chernihiv delivered an acquittal in case No. 751/2536/23 on charges of committing a criminal offense under Part 2 of Art. 255-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine – intentional establishment and dissemination of criminal influence committed in a pre-trial detention center.
The accused, who had a significant criminal record (five previous convictions for grave and especially grave crimes) and a long experience in penitentiary institutions, was accused of having acquired the status of the so-called “overseer“ (top prisoner) of the Chernihiv Pre-Trial Center, he carried out informal management of the prisoners, distributed material resources from the “common fund”, resolved disputes between the prisoners, used and authorised physical violence, organised the supply of prohibited items, determined the caste of the prisoners and generally supported the system of “thieves’ concepts” on the territory of the institution.
The court, having examined the prosecution’s evidence, concluded that the actions of the accused did not constitute the charged criminal offense and acquitted him.
This verdict certainly deserves a thorough analysis from the perspective of international standards in the field of combating informal prison hierarchies, in particular the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the standards of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture.
Without undertaking to analyse the case as a whole, as this requires the full materials of the criminal proceedings, it should be noted that the text of the verdict itself contains a number of formulations that require serious reflection in the context of Ukraine’s international obligations in the fight against organised crime and the protection of prisoners’ rights. Some of the court’s arguments in support of the acquittal not only appear to be debatable from a legal point of view, but also actually ignore a significant body of international practice and standards directly relevant to the circumstances of this case.
The central argument of the court was the statement that “the legislation does not define the concept of “overseer”, and, accordingly, there are no criteria by which it could be argued that a person has this status”. At first glance, this wording appeals to the principle of legal certainty, which is indeed a fundamental element of the rule of law. However, this particular argumentation looks at least debatable when viewed in the context of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in Ashlarba v. Georgia (application no. 45554/08, judgment of July 15, 2014), which directly addresses the issue of criminalisation of activities related to the “underworld” and the compliance of such criminalisation with the requirements of Article 7 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights.
In the case of Ashlarba v. Georgia, the applicant was convicted of belonging to the “underworld” in accordance with Part 1 of Article 223(1) of the Criminal Code of Georgia. The essence of the dispute was precisely whether the content of this particular crime was sufficiently clear and predictable to allow the applicant to regulate his behavior in advance, i.e. the same issue of legal certainty to which the Chernihiv court refers. The ECHR, having considered the case, came to conclusions that were diametrically opposed to the position of the Novozavodsk District Court.
The Strasbourg court noted that belonging to the “underworld” is closely related to the crime of “thief in law“; both crimes reflect the well-known institution of organised crime, which was the subject of a broader legislative package adopted by the Georgian parliament on December 20, 2005, to strengthen the fight against criminal syndicates. The ECtHR drew parallels with the recognised social scourge posed by other mafia-type organisations and noted the reasonableness of the respondent state’s decision to create a legislative framework for more effective combating of this criminal activity.
The ECHR’s conclusion that the criminal phenomenon of the “underworld” was so deeply rooted in society and the social authority of “thieves in law” was so high that among ordinary members of society such criminal concepts as “underworld“, “thief in law“, “dispute resolution using the authority of a thief in law“, “common fund“, etc. were commonly known and widely understood was of fundamental importance. Therefore, as the ECtHR emphasised, by introducing new crimes related to the institution of the “underworld”, the Georgian legislator only criminalised the concepts and actions related to the criminal (“thieving“) subculture, the exact meaning of which was already well known to the general public. The Court even noted that the preservation of colloquial language in the legal definition of these crimes was done in order to make the essence of the newly criminalised crimes easier to understand for the general public. Accordingly, no violation of Article 7 of the Convention was found.
This position of the ECHR is of direct relevance to the assessment of the reasoning of the Chernihiv court. If the Strasbourg court recognised that even for an ordinary Georgian citizen the concept of the “underworld” was “well-known and widely understood”, what can we say about a person who, according to the case file, spent a significant part of his life in prison, was repeatedly convicted of serious and especially serious crimes and, according to the prosecution, directly functioned within this criminal hierarchy? The ECtHR explicitly rejected the attempts of the applicant Ashlarba to present himself as a person to whom the concepts of criminal subculture are alien, especially given his own testimony, where he admitted that he knew about the status of a “thief in law” and considered such a person a “righteous person“. Similarly, in the Chernihiv case, the defendant, according to the case file, not only knew about the relevant concepts, but also actively used them in his daily activities.
The court’s statement that “the legislation does not define the concept of ‘lookout‘”, upon careful analysis, turns out to be a formalistic argument that does not stand up to comparison with the ECHR case law. Firstly, the Criminal Code of Ukraine should not use jargon of the prison subculture. Article 255-1 of the Criminal Code criminalises not “being a warden” but the establishment or spread of criminal influence in society. Note 1 to Art. 255 of the CC provides a detailed definition of criminal influence as any actions of a person who, through authority, other personal qualities or capabilities, promotes, encourages, coordinates or otherwise influences criminal activity, organises or directly distributes funds, property or other assets aimed at ensuring such activity. The task of the court was to assess whether the specific actions of the accused fell within this regulatory definition , and not to look for a definition of criminal jargon in the legislation. Let’s imagine that even if tomorrow the concept of “lookout” is introduced into the Criminal Code, the day after tomorrow such persons will be called “pakhans“, “leaders“, “elders” – or any other neologism. The criminal subculture does not stand still and is able to adapt to any formal prohibitions. That is why in the Ashlarba case, the ECtHR recognised the legitimacy of an approach that criminalises not slang names, but the essence of the criminal activity denoted by these names.
Second, the court’s argument that there is no statutory definition of a “lookout” actually ignores the established practice of the ECtHR regarding the quality of the law. In Cantoni v. France (1996) and other judgments, the ECtHR has consistently noted that the wording of laws is not always precise, that many laws are inevitably formulated in terms that are more or less vague, and that their interpretation and application depend on practice. While certainty is highly desirable, it can lead to excessive rigidity, and the law must be able to keep pace with changing circumstances. A law can still meet the requirement of foreseeability if the person concerned is required to obtain appropriate legal advice to assess the consequences of his or her actions. Therefore, the court’s requirement for a statutory definition of each criminal subculture jargon seems overly formalistic and inconsistent with the principles developed by Strasbourg jurisprudence.
The court’s assessment of the specific episodes of the prosecution should be discussed separately. With regard to the episodes of physical violence (episodes 1, 2, 6), the court noted that “no evidence was provided that the accused or other persons were charged with any criminal offense against life or health of a person” and that “there are no statements of any victims of criminal offenses”. This argument needs to be critically analysed. First, it actually makes the qualification of actions under Art. 255-1 of the CC dependent on the existence of separate criminal proceedings under other articles, which does not follow from the disposition of the provision. Secondly, and much more worryingly, the absence of victim statements in the context of the prison subculture is not so much evidence of the absence of a crime as evidence of the effectiveness of the intimidation system itself, which makes it impossible to file a complaint. The CPT itself, in its numerous reports, including the new standard on informal prison hierarchies published in April 2025 as part of its 34th Annual Report, has consistently emphasised that lower caste prisoners are subjected to constant intimidation and violence, making it virtually impossible for them to file complaints.
Moreover, the ECtHR in Ashlarba v. Georgia explicitly stated that “a ‘thief in law’ rarely commits a crime himself. One of the most prominent features of the control exercised by ‘thieves in law’ is their reputation-based authority in criminal circles”.
With regard to the episodes of dispute resolution between prisoners (episodes 3, 4, 5), the court noted that “it does not appear that the accused exercised criminal influence on the activities of other persons, namely that he assisted in the commission of criminal activities, encouraged other persons to commit criminal activities, coordinated the criminal activities of other persons or otherwise influenced the criminal activities of persons”. However, if we look at the content of these “disputes” – one of them concerned the non-fulfillment of an agreement on the supply of a prohibited mobile phone, another – fraudulent gambling activities, and the third – a conflict related to drug trafficking (methadone) – raises the question: if “arbitration” of conflicts in the field of drug trafficking and smuggling of prohibited items is not coordination or influence on criminal activity, what is? The court seems to have chosen an excessively narrow interpretation of the concept of “criminal activity” that is not consistent with either the letter or the spirit of the law.
As for the episode with the distribution of cigarettes from the “common fund” (episode 7), the court stated that “the transfer and distribution of cigarettes were not and could not be aimed at ensuring criminal activity” and that “it is not specified what kind of criminal activity was ensured by the transfer of cigarettes to the detainees in the pre-trial detention center”. In addition, the court noted that “the legislation does not define the concept of “common fund”, which is a jargon, and therefore it is impossible to establish what funds, property or other assets (income from them) can be considered “common fund”. This argument is the most vulnerable in terms of international standards. It was in the case of Ashlarba v. Georgia, the ECtHR examined in detail the role of the “common fund” as a common money fund of the underworld, the administration of which is one of the most important functions of the leaders of the criminal hierarchy. Numerous socio-legal studies cited by the ECtHR clearly indicate that the “common fund” is not just a mutual aid fund, but an instrument of power and control, with the help of which the leaders of criminal structures ensure the functioning of the criminal organisation, bribe employees of institutions, finance the supply of prohibited items and drugs, reward the “loyal” and punish the “disobedient”. An isolated consideration of the fact of cigarette transfer outside the context of a holistic system of informal governance is a methodologically flawed approach that does not take into account the very nature of the phenomenon of criminal influence.
It is also of considerable concern that the verdict never mentions the concepts of “torture” or “ill-treatment”, although the actions described in the indictment are physical violence on the instructions of the “overseer”, the caste system with “lower” and “disreputable” prisoners, the forced transfer of prisoners between cells, and the system of intimidation – are by their very nature forms of inhuman or degrading treatment within the meaning of Article 3 of the Convention.
The CPT, in its new standard on informal prison hierarchies published in April 2025, explicitly stated that the situation of prisoners belonging to the lowest caste may be considered as constituting inhuman or degrading treatment. Moreover, in two recent ECtHR judgments concerning the treatment of lowest-caste prisoners (S.P. and Others v. Russia, 2023; D. v. Latvia, 2024), the Court found a violation of Article 3 of the Convention. The fact that the Chernihiv court completely ignored the human rights dimension in this case demonstrates the lack of systematic understanding of the issue of informal prison hierarchies.
In its 2025 standard, the CPT provided a comprehensive analysis of the problem of informal prison hierarchies based on 35 years of experience in monitoring visits. The Committee found that an informal system of prisoner self-management persists to varying degrees in the nine countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union, creating an informal hierarchy of prisoners through division into categories or castes and the existence of an informal code of conduct. Prisoners are generally divided into three categories: upper, middle and lowest caste, or “untouchables”, who are stigmatised, segregated, assigned to degrading work and often subjected to intimidation and violence. The Committee considers that prison authorities have an obligation to address the existence of informal prison hierarchies to protect vulnerable prisoners who are at risk of violence and exploitation and to prevent the leaders of these hierarchies from continuing criminal practices. This standard has been developed with a particular focus on the situation in Ukraine, where the CPT recorded during its visit in October 2023 the persistence of practices related to informal prison hierarchies.
It is striking that neither the prosecutor nor the court referred to the ECtHR judgment in Ashlarba v. Georgia, which is one of the most well-known and relevant decisions of the Strasbourg Court in the field of combating organised crime in penitentiary institutions. This judgment not only legitimised the criminalisation of belonging to the “underworld” and related acts, but also provided a detailed legal argumentation as to why the concept of criminal subculture, despite its jargon, is sufficiently clear for the purposes of criminal prosecution.
Similarly, the CPT standard on informal prison hierarchies was not mentioned, which provides a comprehensive vision of the problem and emphasises the need for active counteraction to this phenomenon by the Council of Europe member states. In fact, we have a situation where, on the one hand, there is an acquittal by a national court, and on the other hand, a very illustrative, well-known, important decision of the ECHR and, at the same time, a special CPT standard developed, perhaps primarily for countries such as Ukraine. Both the first and the second were completely ignored.
The court’s remark on the opinion of the forensic linguist is particularly disturbing. The court noted that “in establishing the status of the accused in the criminal hierarchy, the expert operates with criminal jargon that has no regulatory definition”, and that the expert “resorted to a legal assessment of the subject matter of the study, which is beyond his competence, and concluded that the accused had spread influence, using the definition of such influence given in the Criminal Code of Ukraine, i.e. made a logical error in the argumentation of his conclusion (vicious circle)”. This argument requires careful analysis. On the one hand, the remark on the distinction between linguistic and legal assessment has a certain methodological basis. On the other hand, the court actually rejects the only available tool for scientific analysis of the linguistic manifestations of a criminal subculture, without offering any alternative. If linguistic analysis is not a proper means of establishing the content of communication between members of the criminal hierarchy, what is the proper means? The court leaves this question unanswered.
The phenomenon of the prison subculture is too multifaceted and dangerous to be assessed, on the one hand, too primitively, and, on the other hand, too formally. The approach chosen by the court in this case effectively boils down to the fact that without separate criminal proceedings for each episode of violence, without a normative definition of each criminal subculture jargon, and without direct evidence of specific criminal activity to which the distribution of material resources was directed, prosecution for the establishment or spread of criminal influence is virtually impossible. Such an approach, if supported by higher authorities, risks turning Article 255-1 of the Criminal Code into a “dead” provision, which contradicts the very purpose of its introduction – to exclude the influence of criminal hierarchy on criminal, economic and political processes in the state.
It is necessary to look at the essence of the phenomenon of a particular case and evaluate the evidence not through formal indicators, but through the level of human rights violations that have already been committed or are threatened by the existence of prison hierarchies. The facts set out in the indictment – even if they required more thorough proof by the prosecution – painted a picture of a classic informal prison hierarchy with all its features: a caste system, a “common fund“, “arbitration“, a system of punishments and rewards, control over communications between cells, organisation of the supply of prohibited items, intimidation and physical violence. This picture is fully in line with what the CPT describes in its 2025 standard as a threat requiring decisive action by Member States.
Again, it is impossible and unreasonable to assess the merits of the decision without reviewing the full case file, as evidence is always evidence and is subject to evaluation only by the court in a particular criminal proceeding. It is quite possible that the prosecution did not provide an adequate level of proof, that the “beyond reasonable doubt” standard was not met, and that the acquittal was justified in terms of procedural standards. However, the wording used by the court to justify its decision – in particular, the absence of a regulatory definition of criminal subculture jargon, the impossibility of establishing the status of a “lookout“, the alleged lack of a link between the distribution of material resources of the “dormitory” and the provision of criminal activities – raises deep concerns about a very formal approach to addressing the dominance of the prison subculture, which has been identified as one of the main problems of the Ukrainian penitentiary system by both domestic and international experts.
This verdict, if it enters into force, could set a dangerous precedent whereby leaders of informal prison hierarchies will be effectively protected from criminal prosecution under Article 255-1 of the CCU due to a formalistic interpretation of the provision that contradicts the approaches recognised by the European Court of Human Rights in Ashlarba v. Georgia and the CPT standards. It is to be hoped that the appellate instance, if the relevant appeal is filed, will pay attention to the international context of the problem and give due consideration to the arguments of the first instance, taking into account the practice of the ECHR and the CPT standards.
