The Council of Europe provided the State Department of Execution of Criminal Sanctions of Ukraine (SDECS) with the findings of a comprehensive analysis of national regulations and procedures for assessing the prisoners' progress in correction (rehabilitation) with the purpose of sentence commutation or parole release. An online working group meeting with SDECS was held on 30 May 2025.

The Analysis focused on the MoJ Order and Methodology for determining the degree of correction of prisoners, particularly in the context of replacing a life sentence with a more lenient one. The Analysis was conducted by a Council of Europe international consultant and provided the following recommendations:

• Clearly defining the scope of the Order and Methodology
• Simplifying the assessment procedures to reduce the burden on prison staff
• Ensuring alignment of the analysed Methodology with the existing risk assessment procedure
• Ensuring assessments are conducted by trained behavioural experts
• Integrating assessment processes with sentence planning and rehabilitation programmes

The presentation was met with strong engagement from national stakeholders. Participants acknowledged the relevance of the findings and agreed on the need for regulatory amendments to ensure fair, effective, and human-rights-compliant assessment procedures.

This initiative is a step forward in supporting Ukraine’s efforts to improve decision-making processes for life-sentenced prisoners and align national practices with European standards. The Analysis was conducted within the Council of Europe Project “Towards More Humane Conditions of Detention and Reduced Reoffending in Ukraine” (DECOPRIS), implemented under the auspices of the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine ‘Resilience, recovery and Reconstruction’.