Moscow pre-trial detention centers are overcrowded by 22%

The excess of the number of those arrested who are held in Moscow pre-trial detention centers amounted to 22.6% in 2022 from 11% last year. Courts are less and less likely to issue house arrest as a preventive measure, due to overcrowding in isolation centers, people have to sleep in turns. This was announced by the Commissioner for Human Rights in Moscow Tatyana Potyaeva.

“Two years ago, summing up the results of the year, I said that a form such as house arrest was very widely used, which significantly reduced the number of people in the pre-trial detention center. Unfortunately, in recent years this topic has changed significantly and the courts do not often use this form of restriction of freedom, and people are sent to pre-trial detention centers. If last year the overlimit was 11%, then this year it is already 22.6%,” Ms. Potyaeva said at a press conference following the results of work in 2022 (quote from Interfax).

She noted that the office of the Commissioner for Human Rights will work on this issue in 2023, “so that alternative punishment measures are taken, especially for business.” “They (entrepreneurs.— “b”) can absolutely get an alternative form, pay a large bail or receive house arrest, thereby freeing up places in pre-trial detention centers,” Tatyana Potyaeva explained.

In December last year, Georgy Volkov, chairman of the Moscow Public Monitoring Commission (POC), said that in 2021 the courts began to choose a measure of restraint in the form of arrest almost 15% more often than a year earlier. According to him, at that time, entrepreneurs placed in a pre-trial detention center accounted for up to 15% of their total number.

Daria Erozbek