Russia’s penitentiary regulator moves to require 48-hour notice of community prison inspectors

Human rights advocates in Russia believe that a new policy floated by Russia’s federal penal system regulator FSIN will be “the beginning of the end” of human rights advocacy in Russian prisons.

FSIN has proposed requiring a 48-hour notice for jail and prison inspections by members of the grassroots watchdog committees called “ONKs” in Russia, as reported by Interfax.

An explanatory note submitted together with FSIN’s draft order says that 48-hour notice is needed for the sake of the inspection committee members’ own “personal safety.”

TASS points out that, under the current rules, community inspectors can notify a pre-trial detention center of an upcoming visit immediately before they arrive. This enables human rights advocates to respond promptly to alerts about violations.

According to the Moscow ONK president Georgy Volkov, the new policy, if implemented, will compromise the work of community inspectors in Russia’s prisons. “If these limitations are adopted,” Volkov said, “the work of inspectors will become ineffective. It’ll be merely an imitation of real work. Some of the colleagues have told me that they will publicly step down, and I support them. They have no intention of pretending to do what they do.”

Volkov added that 50 members of regional ONKs around Russia have spoken against the proposed new measure, and that he himself believes this policy would herald “the beginning of the end of a social institution that took 15 years to build.”