Life behind bars in Russia

Now, when the prison and camp population of Russia is once again approaching a million (see note below), we need to realize that this number points only to the quantity of persons already convicted by a court. But those who are behind bars, but awaiting trial make up another several hundred thousand.

Interest in “behind bars” topics is reviving. Time and again, you encounter on various websites flat little jokes about “the oligarch who sews mittens”, bankers who have supposedly robbed the country blind, terrorists who are supposedly preparing their acts daily practically right under the walls of the Kremlin, and others.

To joke, of course, is not prohibited. It would be better, true, to do this after a verdict has entered into legal force, and not before it has been pronounced. And it would be better still to analyze the quality of the preliminary investigation and the trial itself in these cases, because after that, it may very likely emerge that both the investigators and the court were strongly engaged by certain “customers”. For example, by the administration of the Guarantor of the Constitution.

And this is why I offer readers several articles on criminal-procedure and criminal-execution [Russian for “penal”—Trans.] topics. But I’ll start by recounting a few things about the life of arrestees in camp. For example, about private life.

I’ll say right from the start: it’s hard to write about something that, in essence, doesn’t exist. Furthermore, the private life of prisoners is even not envisioned by Article 12 of the Criminal-Execution Code (CEC) of the Russian Federation, which determines the basic rights of convicts.

The absolute fundamental right of a convict (Art. 12, para 1) is – to receive information about his duties. Further – in descending order: he has the right – to polite address on the part of the personnel of the institution, to address proposals and even complaints, to conduct correspondence in his native tongue, to the protection of health, to social security (put more simply – to receive a pension in the colony, if this pension had been earned beforehand), to communication with a lawyer, to visitation with relatives. That’s it. Period. About the right to the inviolability of personal life (Article 23 of the Constitution of the RF) – not even half a word.

According to the data of the Ombudsman for human rights, in the year 2001 in Russia there were 1 mln. 300 thousand found in places of deprivation of liberty. On average in a strict-regime colony – 1300 persons. On average in one barrack are found 130 persons. The daily routine of a convict is thought up in such a manner that he is not found alone FOR A SINGLE MINUTE. I once calculated that on average, a convict is surrounded by no fewer than ten other convicts. Hour by hour, day by day, month by month, year by year – around you are the same faces, the same monotonous movements, driven to automatism. Such an existence dulls a person and makes his adaptation to a normal environment after release heavy and problemic, at times so conflict-generating that a person ends up in jail once again.

In the European Penitentiary Rules is mentioned that the aims of correctional intervention on convicts consists of preserving their health and dignity, contributing to the formation in them of a sense of responsibility and skills that will contribute to their reintegration in society.

In the Code of Criminal Procedure (CCP) of the RF is mentioned that the objective of our penitentiary system is “the correction of convicts”, which assumes “the formation of a respectful attitude towards the person, society, labor, norms, rules, traditions…” About the ability of a convict to reintegrate into so