Prisons in Russia

Prisons in Russia can be categorized under four types of facilities:

The corrective colony is the most common, with 760 institutions in 2004 across the administrative divisions of Russia. There were also 8 prisons, 62 juvenile facilities, and 192 pre-trial facilities in 2004.

Prisons in Russia are administered by the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN).

Corrective colony regimes are categorized as very strict/special, strict, general, and open. The detachment ( or otryad) is the basic unit of the prison. When not in the detachment, prisoners are required to participate in penal labour, which is in the form of work brigades in colony production zones where prisoners earn a wage of which most is paid to the colony for their upkeep.

In 2010, the then President of Russia, Dimitri Medvedev, reduced the prison population by 17.5%. In 2013, Russia had the world's tenth-highest share of population in prisons.

In 2013 the Pussy Riot activist Nadezhda Tolokonnikova wrote a public letter which drew international attention to prison conditions in Russia. Ilya Shablinsky, a member of the presidential human-rights council who audited her prison, found conditions close to those of "slave labour". Auditors found women prisoners working 14 hours a day with one day off a month.

Prisons were divided into the "red" (run by prison authorities) and the "black" (administered by inmates). According to The Economist (2013) change would demand a deeper reform of the police and the courts.

Tuberculosis has been an ever-present concern within the Russian prison system, and recently a new infectious threat has emerged: multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). Infectious disease researchers Nachega & Chaisson estimate that of the 10% of Russian prisoners with active TB (roughly 100,000 people), 40% of new cases are multi-drug resistant. This prevalence has alarmed public health experts, as have studies such as public health surveyors Bobrik et al.’s report that in 1997, approximately 50% of all Russian prison deaths were caused by TB. Although both MDR-TB and non-resistant TB are treatable, infectious disease experts like Paul Farmer note that the second-line drugs used in MDR-TB therapy are more expensive than the standard TB regimen, which can limit a MDR-TB patient’s access to care.

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