Justice Minister of Ukraine Denys Maliuska has disclosed the ministry's plans to hold a "big sale of prisons," which will later grow into a "big construction of prisons".

"We are starting a big sale of prisons. The prisons are likely to lose their purpose and they will be destroyed. The key value in these facilities for investors is the opportunity to get large land plots with already installed general utilities. Does the sale of prisons mean that we will release convicts to freedom? No, it does not. It is just that we have too much surplus property to maintain. This is where the sale begins," Maliuska wrote on his Facebook page on Thursday morning.

He briefly outlined what the "big sale of prisons" would look like according to the Justice Ministry's plans: "we sell frozen prisons (they are not used, and we only lose money for their protection); we optimize the network of existing prisons, release, freeze and sell up to a dozen still functioning prisons;

we choose the cities in which the pretrial detention centers will be removed from the central parts of the city to the industrial zone, or even outside the city limits; we design and construct the first new and modern pretrial detention facilities in the vicinity; we sell old pretrial detention centers in central parts of cities and move to new ones; we construct or reconstruct penal institutions."

The head of the Justice Ministry said that "the first three steps are already in the process of implementation."

According to Maliuska, over the next few weeks, the Justice Ministry will continue to present the first lots and provide an opportunity for potential buyers to inspect them, and will inform about the dates of the auctions separately.

"As it can be seen from the above plan, the 'big sale of prisons' will grow into 'big construction of prisons.' Therefore, if someone believed that 'everything can be stolen,' he was wrong," the minister said.