The FSIN supported human rights activists: Valery Borshchev on counting a day in a pre-trial detention center as one and a half days in a colony

On the other hand, the future law will equate two days under house arrest to a day in a pre-trial detention center and, accordingly, a day and a half in a colony. (Now a day under house arrest is equal to a day in a pre-trial detention center). The bill does not concern a number of articles, including those related to drugs and terrorism, charges related to them often appear in political criminal cases. The text of the bill and the chronology of its adoption can be found in the State Duma database.

talked about the bill OVD-Info with Valery Borshchev, a dissident, former State Duma deputy and creator of the system of Public Monitoring Commissions for monitoring places of deprivation of liberty.

What do you think about the bill that equates a day in a pre-trial detention center to a day and a half in a colony?

“This is a long-standing idea of ​​human rights activists. We have been achieving this for almost 20 years. We were able to achieve this because the jailers took our side: the pre-trial detention center has a huge overcrowding limit (overcrowding - OVD-Info ). I once spoke at the Public Chamber and proposed this option: if the pre-trial detention center already contains as many people as required by the standards, new ones should not be accepted there, but put on a waiting list. This is what they do, for example, in Denmark and Sweden. Then everyone laughed at me.

When did you propose this?

— In my opinion , in 2009.

How can this work?

- And like this. The court condemns, there is no place in prison. Then the prisoner is transferred to house arrest, he sits at home and waits for a place in prison to open up. My position is that the prison should be independent from the investigation and other structures. The prison must follow its own rules. For example, do not accept prisoners over the limit. This is the Western experience. When in Moscow there was a huge over-limit in the pre-trial detention center, the jailers also began to talk about what needed to be put on the waiting list.

The independence of the prison also means that lawyers and investigators have equal access to the pre-trial detention center. Not like ours. The investigator is always welcome, and the lawyers at Butyrka and Matrosskaya Tishina stand in line in the morning to see their clients.

Human rights activists are long-distance workers. They offer something , at first they reject it, but in the end they agree with us.

I first spoke about this (that differently days in pre-trial detention centers and colonies need to be counted - OVD-Info ) in 1999, when I was in the Duma. They didn’t agree with this then, but Krasheninnikov (Pavel Krasheninnikov, in 1999 he was Minister of Justice, since 2000 - State Duma deputy, permanent chairman of committees on legislation - OVD-Info ) treated this idea with attention.

I had a conversation with Krasheninnikov, I said that the conditions in the pre-trial detention center are seriously different from the colonies, in general a person is not yet guilty, but he is already in prison, and investigators do not go to the pre-trial detention center for six months, or even more. I said that such a law could stimulate the investigation to work. So that investigators don’t hang around somewhere , leaving a person (in a pre-trial detention center - OVD-Info ) to acquire new diseases. Here is Nikita Belykh, I knew him well before landing. An absolutely healthy man became disabled in a pre-trial detention center, and there are many such examples.

Our Social Partnership Foundation deals with the problem of the spread of tuberculosis. I visit tuberculosis wards behind bars: I see that people get open tuberculosis in prison. In general, this is nonsense in light of the anti-tuberculosis policy pursued in the country.

This bill plays an important role in achieving independence of the prison from the investigation. What is one and a half days in prison for a day in a pre-trial detention center? Firstly , it's money. Yes, acquittals are now 0.2%, but they do happen. Now, if a person is acquitted in court, he will be entitled to one and a half times more compensation than before.

Secondly , investigators will not get their kick: keeping the accused in a pre-trial detention center as long as they want. The investigation becomes not so omnipotent. And now the courts will not send people to pre-trial detention centers so daringly. I met people who spent six years in a pre-trial detention center waiting for trial. And now you can find them. It turns out that such a person served, as it were, nine years in prison. That is, it is more likely that he will be given a sentence that will be credited for time served in a pre-trial detention center.

So, it seems to me that this bill is a victory for human rights activists. It is Karsheninnikov’s considerable merit that he promoted this bill. On my own behalf I would like to thank Krasheninnikov.

Yes, it took us almost 20 years. But the Investigative Committee resisted with all its might! Bastrykin did not accept this law in spirit, they slowed it down. But this year, throughout the country, there is a huge increase in the limit for pre-trial detention centers, and as a result, the Duma adopted the bill.

This looks like just arithmetic - a year or a year and a half - but it will affect both the courts and the investigation.

How was Bastrykin’s resistance expressed, and what was the support of the jailers? Has the FSIN sent any appeals to the State Duma?

- No. The Federal Penitentiary Service was part of the working group on this bill. There were representatives of the investigation, the prosecutor's office and the Federal Penitentiary Service. I was not at the last meetings of the working group, but I know about it from the jailers.

The bill lay in the State Duma for 10 years. How often did this group meet?

— The composition of the participants was constantly changing. Such groups gather when a new reading of a bill is planned. At recent meetings, the position of the FSIN has become positive. My friends in the Prosecutor General's Office, who deal with the penitentiary system, support this idea - at least in conversations with me. I must say that at one time Yuri Chaika supported the law on public control (regulating the work of Public Monitoring Commissions - OVD-Info ) - when I pushed through this law. Chaika supported both as Minister of Justice and as Prosecutor General.

According to my information, before the second reading of the bill, the Investigative Committee was against it, the Federal Penitentiary Service was in favor, and the Prosecutor General’s Office was more for than against. I believe that the issuance of a positive opinion from the legal department of the presidential administration on this bill was delayed under pressure from the Investigative Committee. And now it has appeared because the Federal Penitentiary Service can no longer withstand the overcrowding of the pre-trial detention center. I often go to pre-trial detention centers and see people sleeping on the floor because there aren’t enough beds— what the hell .