1
0
I recently carried out what might seem like a routine administrative procedure — I sent an information request to the Department for the Enforcement of Criminal Sentences at the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine. The request concerned public information on the use of solitary confinement in its various forms within Ukraine’s prison system: punishment cells, disciplinary isolation units (DIU), cell-type rooms (CTR), and solitary cells in remand centres — covering each year from 2010 to 2025.
The request contained 21 specific questions: the number of persons subjected to various forms of isolation; the average and maximum duration; the number of cases of consecutive imposition of disciplinary sanctions; the number of persons held in solitary confinement for more than six months and more than one year continuously; the grounds for the application of administrative (preventive) isolation; and the number of cases in which such decisions were overturned on appeal. The questions were formulated in accordance with the classification used by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT): disciplinary, administrative/preventive, and protective solitary confinement.
The response arrived promptly. Its content was shocking.
The Department stated that it “provides information on the number of persons held in penal institutions between 2010 and 2026, as available to the Department.” That was all — just the total number of prisoners. “No other information has been compiled by the Department in the course of exercising its powers under current legislation, nor is such information in its possession.” To “obtain up-to-date information,” the Department suggested contacting correctional facilities and remand centres directly.
In other words: no systematic statistics on solitary confinement are kept in Ukraine. And, it appears, none ever have been.
WHAT SOLITARY CONFINEMENT MEANS UNDER CPT STANDARDS — AND WHY IT IS FAR FROM TRIVIAL
To appreciate the scale of the problem, it is necessary to briefly recall what the international standard in this area entails.
In 2011, the CPT devoted a dedicated section of its 21st General Report (CPT/Inf(2011)28) to solitary confinement — one of the Committee’s most thoroughly developed normative documents. Its starting point is unequivocal: solitary confinement can have “extremely damaging consequences for a person’s psychological, physical and social well-being,” and the most telling indicator of this is the significantly higher rate of suicide among prisoners subjected to the measure. The CPT states explicitly that solitary confinement “in itself potentially raises issues relating to the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment.”
The CPT has visited Ukraine on numerous occasions, and the issue of solitary confinement has featured in its reports on Ukraine. The Ukrainian state has provided responses. A dialogue of sorts has taken place. Yet, as it now emerges, this dialogue unfolded in circumstances where the central executive body responsible for managing the prison system neither possessed nor collected any systematic information about how many people are subjected to solitary confinement, on what grounds, for how long, or with what consequences.
THE ABSENCE OF STATISTICS IS NOT A TECHNICAL PROBLEM — IT IS A SYSTEMIC ONE
The absence of statistics is not a gap in reporting. It is a reflection of how the system treats the very phenomenon it administers. What is not counted is not managed. What is not managed is not monitored. What is not monitored becomes a space for arbitrary discretion — and wherever arbitrary discretion exists, the risk of abuse follows.
The CPT is explicit on this point: “detailed records must be kept regarding decisions on solitary confinement and regarding the review of such decisions.” This is not a mere recommendation; it is a requirement of the principle of accountability, without which a system may formally satisfy standards while in practice operating beyond any external or internal control.
In any prison system — and this is not a question of a state’s level of development or prosperity, but of basic administrative culture — statistics on solitary confinement are compiled, summarised, and published. They serve as a tool for analysing practice, assessing compliance with standards, identifying anomalies, justifying reforms, and ensuring accountability to society. Without them, any discussion of prison reform resembles an attempt to treat a patient without recourse to medical indicators.
It is telling that the Department’s response includes a reference to a ruling of the plenum of the High Administrative Court concerning what does not constitute an information request. Rather than acknowledging and explaining the absence of data, the Department’s first instinct was to construct a legal justification for why it is not obliged to produce it. That, in itself, speaks volumes.
AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF DECLARED REFORMS
I write these lines in the context of my own academic work, and the Department’s response is an instructive example of the disconnect that pervades this field.
For years, Ukraine has been declaring prison reform. A new Criminal Executive Code has been adopted, negotiations are ongoing within the framework of European integration, and the state cooperates with the Council of Europe. And yet, the central body responsible for managing the prison system cannot answer a basic question: how many people were placed in solitary confinement this year, and for how many days?
This gap feels particularly acute against the backdrop of wartime. I recognise that public demand for oversight of the prison system is currently at a low ebb — there are more pressing matters. But it is precisely when public attention wanes that the risk of uncontrolled use of restrictive measures increases. And it is precisely now that the foundations of the post-war system are being laid.
The first — and most fundamental — recommendation for any Human Rights Strategy for the Prison System to 2035 must therefore be this: introduce systematic statistical reporting on solitary confinement, disaggregated by type, duration, grounds, institution, and category of person. Not as a technical requirement, but as a foundational condition of accountability.
Until that is in place, all talk of compliance with CPT standards, reform strategies, and European integration commitments remains just that — talk.
