Ukrainian prisons were put up for sale

The Ministry of Justice of Ukraine has started to sell empty prisons. The first object put up for sale will be the state institution Irpen Correctional Center (No. 132).

The event, timed to coincide with the start of the big prison sale, will be attended by the Minister of Justice of Ukraine Denis Malyuska.

“During the event, the Minister of Justice will talk about the plans for further sales and the directions of using the funds received from the sale of prisons”, - the Ministry of Justice quotes Interfax as saying.

The facility on the territory of which the event will take place is located in the center of the village of Kotsyubinskoye, 14 kilometers from Kiev. In accordance with the order of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine dated June 13, 2019 No. 1750/5, the last convicts from the state institution "Irpen Correctional Center (No. 132)" were transferred in August 2019 to another prison, and the correctional center itself was mothballed.

Ukraine is by no means the first state that has taken care of the re-profiling of the empty facilities of the penitentiary system.

In many countries, former prisons have become popular tourist attractions. In Istanbul, a former prison has been converted into a five-star Four Seasons Sultanahmet Hotel. Popular tourist hotels Katajanokka and Langholmen Hotell in the capitals of Finland and Sweden were also prisons in the recent past.

There is a museum in the Tower of London, which served as a place of imprisonment for disgraced nobles and heirs to the throne. Tours for tourists are also held in the South African prison for political prisoners on Robin Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, as well as on Devil's Island, 13 kilometers from the French city of Cayenne.

On Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, the United States, a prison for high-risk criminals, closed in 1963, was turned into a popular museum. And the museum, created in the former Cambodian prison Tuol Sleng, contains such terrible instruments of torture and gloomy children's cells that especially impressionable tourists are not recommended to visit it.