The documents included in this section were mainly prepared for
the pilot group of experts on the penal reform in Russia established within the framework
of the program for cooperation between the Council of Europe and Russia. In addition to EC
experts, other participants in the work of this group included EC Secretariat officials,
representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the MVD research institute, the
Presidential Legal Department and the Moscow Center for Prison Reform. The pilot group’s
first meeting took place in Strasbourg in June 1995; the second, in Moscow and Ryazan that
year, and the third is planned for Strasbourg in late January, 1996.
This section also includes some of the documents being prepared for the pilot group’s
third meeting. They appear here in their preliminary form and are dated December 1995
because as this book went to press, work on these documents was still in progress.
“Russia’s real economic possibilities,
even if GDP rises and the prison population declines, do not allow for the observance of
international standards, let alone provide the very minimal needs of prisoners and basic
living conditions from the federal budget.”
“A simple increase in funding from federal budget and Western
countries will only aggravate already existing problems if not accompanied by real
reform”.
“The concept of the reform should by all means stipulate proposals
on bringing current legislation in the fields of correction, conditions for detainees and
arrestees into compliance with international standards. But as long as laws remain mere
declarations that actually worsen the situation on the ground, the authors believe that
beginning discussion on that topic would be both senseless and wrong...”
“...What is going on in the law-making field is rather like making
the fountain work while people are dying around it. We face a horrible reality: our
penitentiary institutions are turning into death camps...”
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