Russia's Justice Ministry proposes a curious and potentially lucrative prisoner email scheme

The Ministry of Justice is generously planning revisions to its internal regulations that will allow prison inmates to send complaints, petitions, and suggestions over email. Less generously, officials will bill prisoners for every email, and the option will only be available at some facilities. Human rights lawyer Andrey Lepekhin told Meduza that the reforms are likely just a budgetary scheme by the Federal Penitentiary Service to grab funding for their computers.

Russian prison officials censor the complaints, petitions, and suggestions written by inmates. “For example, right now, if a prisoner writes a letter from prison, complaining about his sentence, or his verdict, or something like that, then his letter is subject to internal censorship,” Lepekhin explained. “And if he complains about the conditions of his detention or about prison staff, they might not send his letter and they could start threatening him.”

According to current federal regulations, there are several censorship exemptions for incarcerated persons, including appeals to courts, prosecutors, higher-level penitentiary system officials, executive and legislative authorities, public monitoring commissions, human rights agencies, both houses of parliament, and the president. Under the proposed reforms, it’s unclear whom prisoners would be allowed to email.

• At the beginning of the year, Russian prison officials reported that the country’s prison population was roughly 602,000 people — the lowest it’s ever been in post-Soviet Russia.