The Prosecutor General's Office filed claims against the FSIN

penitentiary system

Yesterday, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation sent to the head of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), Yuri Kalinin, a proposal to eliminate violations of the law in penal colonies. The document talks about numerous violations of material and living conditions, sanitary standards and working conditions for convicts in Russian colonies. Human rights activists note that the list of violations indicated by the prosecutor’s office is far from complete. Yesterday, the Federal Penitentiary Service told Kommersant that they would conduct their own verification of the claims made, and called some of them “nitpicking.”

Yesterday, the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation published on its website a presentation to the head of the Federal Penitentiary Service, Yuri Kalinin, on eliminating violations of the law in penal colonies. According to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, such institutions place, in particular, persons who have committed crimes through negligence or who have not previously served a sentence of imprisonment (when committing a crime of minor and medium gravity). There are 157 such colonies in Russia.

The document, signed by Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky, contains a whole list of violations of the law in the execution of sentences in the form of imprisonment, identified in April-May by prosecutorial checks. “Almost everywhere the requirements of Article 99 of the Penal Code of the Russian Federation on material and living support for convicts are violated. A similar situation arises with the provision of convicts with the minimum living space provided for by sanitary standards.” Similar violations were detected in colony settlements in the Kaliningrad, Kostroma, Smolensk, Sverdlovsk, Tver and Tyumen regions, in the Krasnodar and Perm territories, and the Republic of Chuvashia. “Prosecutors everywhere have identified numerous facts of the failure to provide convicts with a sufficient number of beds, bedding, furniture, dishes, seasonal clothing and shoes, and personal hygiene products,” the document states, “and the deterioration of individual buildings and structures of the colonies ranges from 30 to 100%. Some convicts live at their workplaces in unsanitary conditions." According to the Prosecutor General's Office, in the majority of the colony settlements inspected, the mandatory receipt of general and primary vocational education for convicts is not organized. The document states that often in colony settlements, medical units and points operate without licenses.

Human rights activists point out that the list of violations listed by the Prosecutor General’s Office is far from complete. “The main thing that prosecutors do not write about is that prisoners in such colonies practically die of hunger,” Valery Abramkin, head of the Center for Assistance to Criminal Justice Reform, commented on the document. “When a prisoner is in a regular prison or colony, he is fed and watered. And in the colony-settlement, prisoners live at their own expense, but with salaries amounting to hundreds of rubles, it is not clear how they exist, the Federal Penitentiary Service and other government agencies are obliged to provide normal work for prisoners, but for some reason the prosecutor’s office does not write about this.” According to Mr. Abramkin, the majority of prisoners, who do not have support from the outside, lead a hungry or six-month existence in such colonies. “In theory, being sent to such colonies corresponds to a mild punishment,” Mr. Abramkin explained, “but in reality, such punishment is sometimes more severe than prison.”

“There are justified claims,” the head of the FSIN press service, Alexander Sidorov, commented to Kommersant on the Prosecutor General’s Office’s presentation. However, he called most of the listed violations “nitpicking.” “Of course, we will look into and conduct an internal audit of the violations listed in the document,” said Mr. Sidorov. “It’s no secret that the prosecutor’s office also has a biased approach to many things; there were cases when we were accused of something, and then It turned out that this is not true. It is ridiculous to demand that the penal system be ideal. Serious funding for modernizing the system began only in 2003, and it is clear that it is impossible to do everything in three years.” In its submission, the Prosecutor General's Office proposed to "resolve the issue of responsibility of officials guilty of violations of the law."

IVAN BURANOV

Census of the settlement