FSIN: over 11 thousand prisoners will be able to ask to be sent to the BAM construction site

The head of the FSIN department for organizing the execution of sentences not related to isolation from society, Elena Korobkova, in an interview with TASS, confirmed information about plans to send convicts to the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM). previously wrote about such an initiative in the government. Kommersant

Korobkova emphasized that convicts can be sent to forced labor only upon their own application to the court and to the region where they lived before the sentence; if placement is impossible, they are sent to other regions. Such convicts are kept in correctional centers with a softer regime, allowing communication with relatives and receiving wages.

“It should be noted that in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, through whose territories the Baikal-Amur Mainline route passes, today more than 11 thousand people serving a sentence of imprisonment have reached the deadline for a possible appeal to the court with an application to replace the unserved part of the imprisonment forced labor,” Korobkova said.

An unnamed TASS source in the FSIN considered it inappropriate to compare the current initiative with the construction of the BAM in the 30s of the last century: “It’s the same as comparing modern builders in St. Petersburg with the peasants who drove piles during the founding of the city.”

Construction of the BAM began in the 1930s by prisoners from the Baikal-Amur forced labor camp and will continue until at least 2030. Earlier, Kommersant wrote that work may slow down due to increased costs of materials and wages: due to the coronavirus pandemic, migrants from Central Asia were unable to return to Russia.