Russia - Prisoners
As of January 2022, (according to the National Prison Administration) the total prison population (including pre-trial detainees / remand prisoners) was 439,453, for a prison population rate of 304 per 100,000 of national population, based on an estimated national population of 144.5 million at beginning of November 2022 (from Russian Federal State Statistics Service figures). The USA prison population rate was 505 per 100,000 of national population, based on an estimated national population of 331.70 million at end of 2020 (U.S. Census Bureau). By another estimate, there are approximately 864 000 inmates in 45 major prison colonies and pre-trial detention centers in Russia. Three quarters of prisoners in Russia have a serious disease such as tuberculosis and AIDS or another illness, the country's ministry of justice admitted in October 2003. About 74 000 prisoners are infected with tuberculosis, 36 000 are HIV positive, 26 000 have syphilis, and 1500 have hepatitis, said Alla Kusnezowa, deputy director of the ministry's department for sentence execution. Also, a third of the country's estimated 820 000 prisoners had mental health problems, and almost all prisoners take drugs.
The present number of inmates in Russia's prisons is among the lowest in the country's history and has been gradually declining over recent years. The Kremlin-linked Wagner mercenary group may have recruited as many as 23,000 convicts and sent them to fight in Ukraine to shore up Russia's faltering invasion. The November 2022 analysis by Mediazona, a Russian news website operating in exile, showed a sudden 6.5 per cent drop in the male population of Russian prisons now compared with August, when Wagner started recruiting convicts.
Russia's Wagner mercenary group had stopped recruiting prisoners to fight in Ukraine, the organization's founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said on 09 February 2023. In December 2022, Reuters reported that the U.S. intelligence community believed that Wagner had 40,000 convict fighters deployed in Ukraine, making up the vast majority of the group's personnel in the country.
If Russia's prison population is assumed to be 860,000, then the 40,000 Wagner had recruited [a low estimate] would represent about 5% of the total. The 6.5% Mediazona report would constitute about 55,000 recruits, a bit higher than the upper limit commonly reported for Wagner. If three quarters of the prison population uffer from serious diseases, then only a bit more than 200,000 would be physically fit for combat. At worst, if no sick people are crazy and no crazy people are sick, the third of inmates with mental health issues that might [or might not] disqualify them from combat service eliminates [possibly as many as] another 70,000 inmates. Of the remaining 130,000 inmates who are both healthy enough and sane enough for combat service, some fraction may be sufficiently sane to want to avoid the meat grinder.
If Russia's prison population is assumed to be 440,000, then the 55,000 Wagner had recruited [a high estimate] would represent about 12.5% of the total. IF three quarters of the prison population uffer from serious diseases, then only a bit more than 110,000 would be physically fit for combat. At worst, no sick people are crazy and no crazy people are sick, the third of inmates with mental health issues that might [or might not] disqualify them from combat service eliminates [possibly as many as] another 37,000 inmates. Of the remaining 73,000 inmates who are both healthy enough and sane enough for combat service, some fraction may be sufficiently sane to want to avoid the meat grinder. Thus Wagner may have ceased prison recruitment by virtue of having exhausted that pool of talent.
In total, there are 869 colonies of various regimes scattered across Russia, eight prisons and 315 remand centers. The Russian penitentiary system is organised in a different manner to corresponding penal systems in most countries: instead of cells in prisons the inmates are housed in barracks in penal colonies. Bunk beds are situated in two rows and each prisoner has a bed, chair and a half of a small bed-side table. Prisoners have access to sinks and toilets at all times but only have one â "wash day" once a week where they can shower.
Each correctional colony had three units with different types of treatment: general treatment for newcomers, yight treatment for those who have committed no disciplinary infractions, and strict treatment for persistent disciplinary problems. Russia's open-prison settlements are described as settlements in which inmates do not wear uniforms, there were few guards, and offenders live in dormitories or in rented apartments within the facilities boundaries. Men and women are housed in the same open-prison settlements and may live in these settlements with relatives. Persistent violators of the internal rules may be transferred to the more traditional correctional facilities.
Prisons in Russia are different from the correctional colonies. Inmates are kept in permanently locked cells, which hold between 5 and 30 people. Two types of offenders are housed in prisons: those who have committed grave crimes that carry sentences of more than 5 years and those referred to prison from correctional colonies because of persistent rules violations.
The geographical location of penal colonies is linked to the concept of economic development adopted back in Soviet times, when prisoners were used as forced labor, such as during the construction of large-scale investments carried out by the Soviet state including the White Sea–Baltic Canal and the Baikal–Amur Mainline (BAM), as well as in forestry in harsh weather conditions – in Karelia, for instance. Even today, the largest number of penal colonies is located in regions that are rich in natural resources (mainly forests).
As far as the reasons for imprisonment are concerned, the largest group of prisoners are criminal prisoners, most of whom were convicted for murder (27.8% of inmates). A similar proportion of prisoners are serving their sentences for drug dealing (25%).
At the beginning of the third millennium Russia was a world leader in terms of the number of prisoners per 100 thousand people of the total population as of October 2015. The countries with the highest prison population rate – that is, the number of prisoners per 100,000 of the national population – are Seychelles (799 per 100,000), followed by the United States (698), St. Kitts & Nevis (607), Turkmenistan (583), U.S. Virgin Islands (542), Cuba (510), El Salvador (492), Guam – U.S.A. (469), Thailand (461), Belize (449), Russian Federation (445), Rwanda (434) and British Virgin Islands (425).
The conditions of keeping in the places of deprivation of liberty remained unsatisfactory in many respects, and the total number of prisoners exceeded the capacities of pre-trial detention facilities and correctional institutions. At the same time, extension of applying alternative sanctions was considered even then not only as the means of reducing the overcrowding of the penal institutions and the cost of maintenance thereof, but also as an important line of the criminal justice reform.
The Criminal Law of the Russian Federation, most of the provisions of which entered into force on January 01, 1997, provided for 12 kinds of punishment in Article 44. Four of them (deprivation of liberty for a specific period, deprivation of liberty for life, custody in a penal military unit, and arrest) involve keeping a convict isolated from the community. In addition, the Criminal Code contains eight kinds of punishment do not provide for such isolation, and a number of provisions on release from criminal liability such as release from liability owing to active repentance. Capital punishment was not executed in the Russian Federation from September 1996 owing to Russia's joining the Council of Europe.
The provisions of the Criminal Code on such alternative sanction as compulsory community service (an analogue to unpaid community service in other countries) remained not implemented for seven years after entry of the Criminal Code into force. Imposition of this kind of punishment began as late as the beginning of 2004. The kind of the works and the facilities where they are to be performed are determined by the local selfgovernment bodies by agreement with the correctional inspectorates. In practice, convicts are usually engaged for work at public utility enterprises and organizations, municipal trade enterprises, land improvement works, or at simple repair and maintenance works.
The reason behind the high number of prisoners in Russia is the repressive nature of the Russian judiciary as a whole. Most recent amendments to the penal code have toughened the penalties.Conditions in prisons and detention centers varied but were often harsh and life threatening. Overcrowding, abuse by guards and inmates, limited access to health care, food shortages, and inadequate sanitation were common in prisons, penal colonies, and other detention facilities.
Prison overcrowding remained a serious problem. While the law mandates the separation of women and men, juveniles and adults, and pretrial detainees and convicted prisoners in separate quarters, anecdotal evidence indicated not all prison facilities followed these rules. In March 2020 Amnesty International stated that prisons' overcrowding, poor ventilation, and inadequate health care and sanitation led to a high risk of COVID-19 infection among prisoners and detainees. According to a Council of Europe report released on April 8, the mortality rate of the Russian prison population in 2019 increased by more than 12 percent, compared with the previous year.
Physical and sexual abuse by prison guards was systemic. For example, on 08 February 2021, media outlets reported that the Russian Investigative Committee brought charges of torture and extortion against the former head and staff of detention center No. 1 in Makhachkala. According to an investigation conducted from 2015 to 2019, the former head of the center, Daud Davydov, and two of his subordinates regularly beat a former investigator of the Investigative Committee, who was himself accused of torture and illegal imprisonment. The detention center officials faced charges of abuse of power with the use of violence, extortion, fraud with the use of an official position, and bribery by a group of persons. As of October no date was set for the court case.
Prisoner-on-prisoner violence was also a problem. For example, the lawyer of Pavel Sheremet, a detainee in the regional tuberculosis hospital No. 1 in Saratov, told media that inmates at the facility beat and sexually assaulted Sheremet on 03 June 2021. Media outlets reported that the prosecutor's office of the Saratov Region initiated an investigation into the allegations, although as of October no further information was available on the outcome of the case.
Olga Romanova, a journalist and activist who has headed the prisoner rights organization Russia Behind Bars (Rus Sidyashchaya) since 2008, tells RFE/RL that this exploitation of prisoners is a continuation of the "Stalinist mentality" that has continued to dominate the unreformed prison system under Putin. "It is clear prison reform requires political will, and that is not going to happen. The Russian prison system is decrepit. It was last reformed in 1953, when Lavrenty Beria transferred control of the prisons from the NKVD [secret police] to the Justice Ministry. Now, the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) is formally part of the Justice Ministry, but over the last 15 years all the FSIN directors have either been police or Federal Security Service veterans. There hasn't been a professional FSIN director since 2009.
The old, Stalinist mentality has been preserved, so the main focus of the prison system is not correctional services -- psychiatrists, doctors, teachers, etc. -- but rather operational tasks like working prisoners over or recruiting them for things like giving false statements or committing perjury in court. Hence, the torture. The system that was created in the 1930s…has survived to this day."
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