Photo: ERA

The Ministry of Justice has figured out how to get out of the situation with the construction of correctional centers in which criminals sentenced by the court to forced labor will live. The beginning of the use of this type of punishment has already been postponed several times precisely due to the lack of correctional centers. Officials decided to build (and add somewhere or allocate existing barracks) such centers directly on the territory of existing colonies. Thus, petty hooligans will serve their sentences side by side with murderers, rapists and repeat offenders.

The Ministry of Justice will deploy a network of centers in the colonies, where in a few years convicts will begin to serve a new sentence - an analogue of the Soviet “chemistry”. The Criminal Code already has such a punishment - forced labor. Russian judges were supposed to begin sentencing them on January 1, 2014, but due to the unpreparedness of the correctional centers where the convicted workers would live, this period was postponed by three years - until 2017.

Initially, correctional centers were planned to be located in specially created separate workers' settlements. By 2020, 150 such settlement centers should have appeared for 30 thousand convicted workers. Then it was planned to deploy eight large correctional centers, one in each federal district. There was also an idea to set up temporary settlements during the construction of large projects. The first two ideas fell through due to the high cost of construction, the Ministry of Justice did not find the necessary funds, and the idea of correctional “temporary buildings” did not receive support from above. The government did not want to trust the construction of important government facilities to those who broke the law.

The other day a solution was found. The Ministry of Justice decided to take the most economical route: “isolated areas functioning as correctional centers,” according to the latest draft order, will appear right next to the colonies. In particular, such a center will be attached to the colony in Krasnokamensk, where Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was released last Friday, previously served his sentence. Those sentenced to forced labor will work there in clothing production, as well as produce building materials. In fact, the only thing that makes modern “chemists” different from ordinary prisoners is their living conditions. After work, they will not have a scheduled dinner, evening check-ins, or lights out. They will begin to live under the conditions of the hostel, which, however, will not be allowed to leave.

At the same time, such convicts will pay for utilities and food in correctional centers out of their own pockets. The White House recently approved a bill regulating the procedure for reimbursing convicts for the costs of their maintenance. Payment for utilities and food from the budget will be organized only for the completely poor.

Forced labor will be assigned, in particular, to owners of “rubber” apartments, to “telephone terrorists,” traffickers of mercury and other toxic substances, to those convicted under the articles “Deliberately leaving without help a person in a condition dangerous to life or health,” “ Lending fraud" and many others.

Ex-chairman of the Moscow Public Monitoring Commission Valery Borshchev is surprised by the decision of the Ministry of Justice. “By sending those sentenced to forced labor to the territory of colonies, the authorities are further inflating the shortage of jobs in correctional institutions, since today only 30% of prisoners are provided with work. And it’s unclear where the work for the new convicts will come from,” the human rights activist noted.

According to Mr. Borshchev, forced labor should be organized at important construction sites, where free people work and where they can earn decent money.

The head of the human rights association "Agora" Pavel Chikov does not see any urgent need for the emergence of another type of punishment. “Everything can still change before 2017; it is not a fact that correctional centers will be able to be organized in colonies - this initiative is very resource-intensive, and its implementation will completely depend on the economic situation in the country. In general, Mr. Chikov sees nothing wrong with the fact that hard workers will live next door to ordinary prisoners. “The FSIN is still dealing with both,” he noted.

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