UKRAINE: ZHITOMIR: LIFE IN PRISON IS BETTER THAN FREEDOM

(8 Mar 1996) Russian/Nat

Locked up and surrounded by barbed wire, prisoners in Ukraine are quietly doing time like prisoners anywhere else in the world.

Only here they just can't do enough of it.

With the country paralysed by economic meltdown, Ukraine's prisoners are realizing that life on the inside is actually better than a life of freedom.

At the Berdichov Maximum Security Prison in Zhitomir, the razor wire is more a symbolic than necessary measure - few of these inmates are in any hurry to leave.

With the country paralysed by economic problems, prisoners find that life on the inside is actually better than a life of freedom.

Average wages in the poverty-stricken former Soviet republic work out at little more than 30 U-S dollars monthly.

For most people this is far from enough, making it a serious struggle to put food on the table each day.

Prisoners get three hot meals daily for nothing.

The arithmetic is simple for inmates who, burdened with a criminal record, are unlikely to find a job on release.

Employed in the prison workshop making parquet flooring, they can make around ten U-S dollars monthly for themselves.

Tried for everything from petty theft to attempted murder, Viktor Antonov has been sentenced in all for over 100 years and it suits him fine.

SOUNDBITE: (Russian)

"I watch TV, read the papers.. so I know what things are like outside. Well, to tell the truth, there's only one choice - crime or nothing. Do a nice little earner - what else can you do?"
SUPER CAPTION: Viktor Antonov, prisoner

Like most prisoners, Anatoly Freitach isn't in a hurry to leave. If released, he wouldn't even have enough money to travel home.

SOUNDBITE: (Russian)

"They'll give me a ticket to the border then I'll have to walk along the rails. I wrote home for money but my father is paralysed and my brother's just been laid off."
SUPER CAPTION: Anatoly Freitach, prisoner

Ukraine still operates a Soviet-era penal code which doesn't allow bail for first time offenders.

Added to the rising number of young people turning to crime, the result is a one-way flood of new inmates with little hope of breaking the vicious circle. And little reason to try.

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