A Brief Description of the System at the Present Stage
As of January 1, 1999, the 731 corrective colonies (including
119 forest ones) held 719,500 convicts, including 39,800 women; 47,700 convicts
were held in forest corrective colonies.
The 191 pre-trial detention centers and prisons maintain
275,000 suspects and defendants accused of committing crimes.
In addition, 2,161 penal inspectorates have on their
registers 651,000 offenders sentenced to corrective labor.
Sixty three educational colonies keep 20,100 offenders who
are minors.
Held in the institutions of the penal system are more than
2,300 HIV-infected and 92,000 tuberculosis patients.
Every fifth of those serving sentences, has been convicted
for murder or intentional grave bodily harm, every fourth – for banditry,
robbery or rape. More than half have had more than one conviction. About a third
of those convicted are under 25 years of age.
Problems of the Penal System Functioning
1. Financing.
Insufficient financing is today the most acute problem.
Allocations for the maintenance of the penal system’s institutions in 1998
were set at 7,800,000,000 rubles, or 61 percent of the need. Actual financing
was 5,900,000,000 rubles, or 75.6 percent of the set sum – only 46 percent of
the required financing. Means are lacking for the purchase of the necessary
amount of foodstuffs, medicines, the procurement of farm products and fuel for
the autumn and winter period. In fact, insufficient financing engenders other
problems as well. Financing for 1999 is actually at the previous level,
providing only 60 percent of what is needed for the maintenance of convicts.
2. Overcrowding.
The problems of the accommodation and maintenance of the
different categories of convicts keep aggravating.
The general-type corrective colonies are over-filled to 110
percent of capacity, colonies for the maintenance of TB convicts — to 145
percent of capacity, the medico-prophylactic institutions — to 126 percent,
corrective colonies for life prisoners — to 105 percent of capacity.
The pre-trial detention centers are overcrowded by 44.3
percent, without account of the new standard norm for the maintenance of
arrested people introduced under a federal law as of January 1, 1998, — of 4
sq.m. of cell floor area per person, instead of the old standard of 2.5 sq.m.
There is an average of 1.73 sq.m. of cell floor area per person, in some
facilities — 0.5 sq.m.
Sixty percent of the buildings are in emergency or otherwise
unsatisfactory condition, requiring capital repairs. On the conclusions of
expert commissions, 26 pre-trial detention centers and prisons are pronounced
completely unfit for exploitation.
Still awaiting solutions are such matters as the maintenance
of convicts whose death sentences have been commuted to life imprisonment, as
well as of persons held in pre-trial detention centers pending the commutation
of a death sentence to life imprisonment by way of pardoning (total of 850
inmates).
In case the State Duma passes in 1999 a resolution “On
Proclaiming an Amnesty” some 94,000 people would be released from the penal
system’s institutions, including about 21,000 from pre-trial detention
centers, which would somewhat releave the situation in them.
3. Maintenance of TB patients.
The situation regarding medical care for TB patients, as it
has shaped out in the penal system’s institutions, is assessed as extremely
tense. Every year from 35 to 40 thousand convicts contract tuberculosis for the
first time and some 30 thousand TB patients enter pre-trial detention centers.
The medical institutions of the penal system are overcrowded and lack normal
conditions for maintaining the patients, requirements for feeding, medicines and
medical equipment are met by only 20-25 percent. Because of the shortage of
places in stationary TB institutions about 15 thousand TB patients are
maintained in isolated sectors of corrective institutions, and some 2,000 —
among healthy convicts.
The fight against this dangerous disease has been joined by
international organisations. At present actively colaborating with the Russian
penal system are three foreign medical organisations: “Doctors Without
Frontiers”, the New York Health Institute (NYHI), and Medical Aid in
Emergencies (MERLIN) of Great Britain. However, while helping to tackle the
problem locally, they can hardly for the time being substantially improve the
situation as a whole.
4. Providing convicts with work.
More than a 100,000 convicts have no work to do. Wages
(within
200 rubles a month) are low. The production
facilities are not renewed in any substantial way, nor are there any funds for
the repair of machine tools and equipment, for replenishing circulating capital.
Faced with insufficient financing, the penal system’s enterprises have to pay
for the convicts’ foodstuffs, to supply clothing and other essentials without
pre-payment, to supply the living zone and administrative premises with heat and
electricity on credit. The ever present necessity to keep patching up holes
undermines the foundations of production and creates new problems.
5. Reforming the penal system.
When tackling a reform of the penal system, the state should
first of all proceed from the need to bring Russian penal legislation in line
with the RF Constitution, and the minimum standard rules for the treatment of
convicts.
In connection with Russia’s commitments undertaken when
joining the Council of Europe, and charging the penal system with a number of
new functions that were never discharged before at all, or only in part, a Draft
Concept of reforming the penal system of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian
Federation has been elaborated.
When elaborating the Concept, proposals and remarks of
law-enforcement agencies, of other interested ministries and departments,
scientific institutions, practical workers within the penal system, as well as
the relevant provisions of the Federal crime fighting program, were taken into
account.
The Concept was considered and approved at a session of the
Collegium of the Justice Ministry of the Russian Federation on February 15,
1999.
Chief Penal Board, Russian Justice Ministry
