He carefully felt the soil with his hands, checking its quality, then cupped it in his hands and smelled it. It was clear this was not the first time he had worked in a vegetable patch, but it was definitely the first time something like this had happened in a prison. The look on his face said it all. The second inmate also stood there, eyes wide. When I asked him what he thought, his reply was short and snappy: “Amazing!”
On June 7, 2024, a team of Dutch trainers visited Drohobych prison for the fourth time and contributed to the development of a new mental health system in Ukrainian prisons. The group consisted of a former prison warden, a psychiatrist, a psychologist and a sports trainer, all of whom have many years of experience in prison mental health and a long track record of working in the region.
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The project is part of a reform plan that the Ministry of Justice agreed with the Federal Global Initiative on Psychiatry in 2019. At that time, the prison mental health system was still very rudimentary and very Soviet, the psychiatric department was located in the prison hospital, treatment was mainly limited to providing medication and spending completely empty days in bed. The reform plan was halted in March 2020 when the impact of COVID-19 made it impossible to implement, and it was planned to resume the process at the end of 2021, but soon Ukraine was invaded and again it seems impossible to do anything.
But every crisis is an opportunity. When the Central Penitentiary Hospital in Vilnyansk had to be evacuated due to its proximity to the front line, we found new space for a psychiatric department in the prison in Drohobych. Dutch private funding allowed us to renovate an entire floor into a modern unit with 45 beds. And a project funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs allowed us to develop two more units in Vinnytsa and Zhytomyr and create a daytime activity program in Drohobych. Over time, our group of Dutch experts conducted five trainings for prison staff from the three facilities and the Central Penitentiary Administration in Kyiv.
The Drohobych unit is by far the largest of the three and specializes in serving veterans who have committed crimes due to the trauma of war and been imprisoned there, so a lot of effort has been put into developing a daytime activity program. Patients are already supported through art therapy and sports facilities, and in the coming months a kitchen will be added so patients can cook for themselves.
During a training session for staff and patients in January, a desire to create a vegetable garden was expressed. As the unit is on the third floor and has no elevator, cultivation can only be done indoors. A Dutch trainer arrived in Drohobych and surprised everyone by bringing all the materials needed to create the garden, including tomato and pepper seedlings. The inmates needed no prompting; with dedication and careful hard work the garden was created, and it is clear that there is much more to come. Despite the war, the Ukrainian prison system is implementing an incredible reform program.
Robert van Vooren is Chief Executive of the Federation for Human Rights in Mental Health (FGIP) (www.gip-global.org), Professor of Political Science and Director of the Andrei Sakharov Center for Democratic Development Studies at Vytautas Magnus University (www.sakharovcenter-vdu.eu), Professor of Political Science at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia, and Visiting Professor at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Kyiv Post.
