After the fall of the Soviet Union, the independent Ukrainian country underwent tremendous stress when it shifted from a centrally planned economy to a free market system. Still those changes were led not by true reformators but by postcommunist oligarchy from among the Communist Party of Ukraine and the KGB functionaries. They deftly controlled the privatization process for the purpose of their own enrichment during 1990s. Consequently, unemployment and the number of impoverished and homeless people in Ukraine has increased. The crime rate and the prison population grew until 2001. Changes in penal policy of the Ukrainian government started after the pontifical visit of Pope John Paul II to Ukraine. Than overcrowding in prisons has been stopped and the next 8 years prison population continued to decline. In 2010–2011 the number of remand prisoners increased sharply up to 45,000. Beginning in July 2012, the prison population fell from 154,000 to 79,750 before 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine. As a matter of fact, the Donbas has 20% of all prisons functioning in Ukraine. As a heritage of the Soviet period, Donetsk and Lugansk regions have 20 and 16 prison facilities respectively, three or even four times more than any other region in Ukraine. Convicts were released without any government programs for rehabilitation, destabilizing these regions. During the 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine, hundreds of convicts from prisons in Donbas were armed by the pro-Russian militants. Other prisoners have been used as slave labourers. Prison reform in Ukraine goes on. Prison system of Ukraine The legal bases of the organization and activity of the prison system of Ukraine are laid down in law "On the State Criminal-executive Service of Ukraine" (July 20, 2005). The law sets the service's structure: the executive authority (the State Criminal-executive Service of Ukraine under the Ministry of Justice ); the six regional bodies; and local penitentiary facilities, pre-trial prisons and the probation system. Ukraine's prison system was the responsibility of the Ministry of Internal Affairs until 1998, when it became part of the newly-created State Penal Department. In December 2010 it was reorganized as the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine, directed by the Ministry of Justice, with responsibility for all criminals within the prison system. there were 177 penal institutions in Ukraine: 31 pre-trial detention prisons, 139 penal facilities, and six juvenile institutions and 73,431 inmates, representing 162 prisoners per 100,000 people, a decrease from