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Your support makes all the difference.Sweeping amendments to Russia's criminal code are about to trigger freedom for 350,000 convicts, the biggest mass release since Stalin's Gulags were emptied in the political thaw of the Fifties. But many of them are feared to be homeless, alcoholic, drug-addicted and infected with Aids or tuberculosis.
Sweeping amendments to Russia's criminal code are about to trigger freedom for 350,000 convicts, the biggest mass release since Stalin's Gulags were emptied in the political thaw of the Fifties. But many of them are feared to be homeless, alcoholic, drug-addicted and infected with Aids or tuberculosis.
Yet the new law, which parliament is expected to pass this month, is the first serious attempt to clean up Russia's crowded, diseased, unruly and brutality-plagued prisons
The law's proposed limits on pre-trial detention, reduced sentences for petty crimes and expansion of the probation system will make up to a third of the system's one million prisoners eligible for release. "It is only half a step forward, but it will partially relieve some of the ugliest problems," said Maj-Gen Sergei Vitsin, a leading criminologist. "Our state is being pushed into this for urgent financial reasons, but the logic leads in a progressive direction."
Conditions in the network of jails, prison camps and detention centres are squalid. One in 10 prisoners is infected with TB. Aids is rife, and is spreading with the growth of heroin addiction. But when a similar prison exodus was tried last year, an amnesty for 12,000 convicts, it failed to deal with the long-term issues, said Oleg Filimonov, the deputy chief of Russia's Department of Corrections and the main author of the new law. "We need sustained reforms that will make our prisons more humane."
Russia's brutal pre-trial detention centres house more than 300,000 suspects, often for five years, awaiting investigation. "Police torture detainees to secure confessions, using beatings, asphyxiation, electric shock and suspension by the arms or legs, as well as psychological intimidation," said Human Rights Watch, an independent campaign group.
The new law will slash permitted pre-trial detention to a year, and implement bail for those on minor charges. Probation will be more accessible, and there will be more family visits and packages for prisoners. The rules will not apply to those convicted of serious crimes such as murder.
Activists say much more is needed. Larissa Bogoraz, a former inmate, said only 0.32 per cent of Russian defendants are acquitted, compared with 15 to 20 per cent in Western countries.
"You are guilty, even if proven innocent," she said. "That's always been the rule."
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