1. Since 1987 considerable changes have
occurred in the Russian penitentiary system.
The first stage of reforms, from 1987 to 1991, was especially
successful. During this period the prison population reduced almost twofold; use of the
death penalty decreased; some types of disciplinary punishments were abolished; prison
conditions improved considerably in penitentiary institutions and particularly in SIZOs; information about the criminal justice system became
available; and detention facilities were open for the mass media, and religious and
non-governmental organizations. In 1988, the USSR signed the U.N. Minimum Standard Rules
for the Treatment of Prisoners. In 1991, special psychiatric hospitals were transferred
from the jurisdiction of the USSR MVD to the Ministry of Health; a concept of judicial
reform was adopted, reforms in the judicial system began; and to some extent democratic
changes affected other institutions within the criminal justice system. Legislative
changes of that period brought rights of detainees and arrestees more into compliance with
international standards.
The process of legislative changes proceeded quite successfully from
1992 to 1995. Penal legislation drew close to international standards: a landmark change
was instituted in 1992, when courts gained the right to appeal arrests, and other
democratic changes in certain criminal justice institutions continued. Taking into
consideration objective difficulties, the rate of legislative innovations was indeed very
high. Yet human rights observance was in fact deteriorating in the criminal justice system
and violations were systematic, outrageous and permanent in nature, particularly pre-trial
detention. A number of legislative acts violating the constitutional rights of detainees
and arrestees were adopted. The prison population grew dramatically (by 150% as compared
to 1991). Legislative innovations became difficult to implement, as they impeded the work
of pre-trail and other correctional institutions.
2. A detailed analysis of the reasons why the reforms failed is
given in other documents of this section. A few are mentioned here.
The lawmaking process is detached from social, political and economic
realities; legislation completely ignores the influence that administrative methods bears
on those institutions subject to reforms; there are no legislative mechanisms for amending
new standards and filling the gap between norms and their implementation; and no
institution monitors new laws in order to determine how realistic they are.
The technology of reforms serves exclusively bureaucratic interests. No
matter how professional and progressive heads of law enforcement departments are, projects
and programs run by such institutions, by the latter’s nature, aim to solve their own
problems, such as extending their spheres of influence, increasing their staff, financing,
and personnel privileges and creating better operational conditions, rather than to
introduce democratic change into society. The Concept for Reorganizing the Criminal
Corrections System of the MVD of Russia for the Period until 2005, which we analyzed
below, serves as a good example of this tendency.
The MVD project meant to preserve the paramilitary nature of the
corrections system, oriented around large, colony-type
institutions and based on the suppression of prisoner's personality. Under the cover of
solving the problem of unemployment, colonies’ production, integrated into the state
economy and aimed at making profits on the use of coercive prison labor, is restored.
According to our estimates, implementation of this program will not settle, but will
deteriorate financial situation of the criminal corrections system (CCS) and make anti-market reforms more probable.
Bureaucratic approaches to reform cannot improve the penitentiary
system, moreover, it can destroy democratic changes in all spheres of public life. While
the gross domestic product has been decreasing, allocations from the state budget for the
criminal justice system are growing. As a result, resources for vitally important social
programs have declined. A preliminary analysis reveals that 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.
Efforts to implement expensive CCS programs in its
current form may result in disastrous consequences for the whole society. The penitentiary
system is in a desperate situation because of its in enormous prison population, which
exceeded 1,000,000 only in MVD GUIN institutions (680
prisoners per 100,000 people) and reached record figures of the Soviet GULAG.
The proposed draft of the Concept for Reorganizing the Criminal
Corrections System of the MVD of Russia for the Period until 2005, contradicts strategic
directions of the Judicial Reform Concept, as it does not even mention such institutions
that protect prisoners' rights, such as the courts, the ombudsman and NGOs. The doctrine
enshrined in the draft project retains the Soviet era vulgar-behaviorist approach, mainly
focusing on controlling prisoners and searching for effective methods of manipulating
prisoners’ personality.
The draft is so focused on bureaucratic goals that its authors neglect
even such penitentiary institutions as police lock-ups (holding thousands of prisoners),
which are under the jurisdiction of another department.
3. Concerning recommendations, we would like to mention,
first of all, requirements that should be met by any drafts of the concept of CCS reform. In our opinion, declarations, idealistic programs, demands
and wishes should be jettisoned. The essence of the concept, should be: what, how and why
we are going to reform, should be thoroughly developed.
What? An accurate description of the current system in legal,
social, economic, historical, and political and contexts.
How? Technology of reforming, containing analysis of negative
and positive experience that was gained in former totalitarian countries. In this section,
we propose an approach to reform based on the experience of carrying out judicial reform
in Russia.
Why? This section should cover not only descriptions of possible
patterns of the future CCS, but strategic (i.e. wider
than bureaucratic) goals of reform in the context of general democratic changes within
society as a whole and the criminal justice system in particular.
While defining the essence of reform, urgent measures solving the most
acute problems in the penitentiary system should be developed. We should emphasize that it
is impossible to settle current acute problems using a bureaucratic approach, as
overcrowding in pre-trial detention, SIZOs and IVSs have demonstrated.
We believe that special bodies which would carry out reform of the
criminal justice system should be established. These include a committee for reform and
prompt response to emergency situations, which would have adequate financing; a council
for reform of the criminal justice system; an analytical group of independent experts. The
first task for the council could be to develop a draft concept of reform, a federal
program of urgent measures to overcome emergency situations in the penitentiary system, a
project of federal standards in the field of corrections, and a draft of the federal
program for the development of regional and parallel systems of corrections.
In our view, strategic directions of reform should be: the
demilitarization of the CCS, decentralization of
administration and establishment of bodies under local authorities outside current
structures. At the initial stage it would be possible to transfer institutions of
pre-trial detention, first of all IVSs; bodies executing
non-custodial punishments; penal institutions for juveniles, women and women with small
children under the supervision of local judicial bodies. These socially vulnerable groups
of prisoners are in the most unfavorable conditions because they are less numerous. This
very reason makes our proposal quite real: it will require few resources to set up such
bodies and institutions. Moreover, we should highly estimate proposals of local
penitentiary workers to establish small multi-purpose local institutions. But first of
all, the Russian government should work out a program of reducing the prison population to
300,000 (to 80,000—100,000 in SIZOs and IVSs) in the next five years, and in 1996 start its
implementation.
December 1995
