Prisoners on release from Russian prisons were promised benefits and housing

True, where to get money and apartments, no one knows yet

44 percent of people released from Russian prisons return there within three years. Shocking numbers, you must agree. This huge relapse can no longer be “ignored”, it is a threat to everyone. After all, at best, a person, not finding a place for himself in a free life, will again sit down for theft. What if he does something worse?

One of the most revolutionary laws of modern Russia – about probation – will come into force on January 1, 2024. There is not much time left to prepare. And preparations under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice began the other day. MK columnist, HRC member Eva Merkacheva takes part in it.

Probation is voluntary. But the authorities hope that annually about 50 thousand convicts will be covered by it.

In order for people in the colonies to agree to take part in the program, they must understand what they will receive. The average prisoner refers to everything that comes from the jailers, more with distrust than with hope. And the employees of the Federal Penitentiary Service themselves, to be honest, vaguely imagine their role in the process of “healing a criminal person.” So the first thing the FSIN will do is train personnel.

But for this there must be a scientific basis, and therefore universities and research institutes will do a number of studies and even hold a scientific conference on the topic of probation. Employees for probation will be taken from among those who were left without work due to the liquidation of the colony (ECs in the country are regularly closed).

Some will work with convicts, and some will work with those who have already been released. All this on the basis of the penitentiary inspections, which are now monitoring probationers and those under house arrest or under restriction of freedom.

So, the prisoner decided to become the object (client, ward – have not yet decided how to call it) probation. He signed the agreement. What’s next? An individual program will be developed for him (now scientists will draw up methods that they will apply). In some cases, it will include a lot of communication with a psychologist and psychiatrist, in some cases this will not be required. Perhaps it will consist of taking courses against aggression and cruelty (what we have been dreaming about for a long time). Career guidance and appropriate education will become mandatory.

What does it take to keep a person from going back to jail? Perhaps the most important thing is work and housing. Well, first of all, money. Now the released person is given 850 rubles, which is usually not enough even to get home. It is assumed that the prisoners (from among those who worked in the colony for at least the last three months) will receive a one-time unemployment benefit when they are free. They will also be employed and, if necessary, they will be given a place in a “boarding school” (so far the social institution is conventionally called).

With housing, the story is not simple: the Ministry of Finance refused to allocate money for the construction of hostels for ex-prisoners. And the law does not directly oblige local authorities to allocate jobs for them. So much in the implementation of probation will depend on the governors. The heads of the subjects can find a common language with businessmen so that they both take jobs and provide temporary housing. Will they? What will interest them?

On average, in each region, from 200 to 1000 “wards” of the probation system will be released annually. On the one hand, it seems to be not so much, but on the other hand, not so little.

Any bureaucratic structure strives for formalization. And all because she believes that this is the only way to see the effectiveness of her work. Reports are impossible to do without, but in the end the system can focus only on them, forgetting about the humanitarian mission, about the person as such.

The danger of formalization and bureaucratization can obviously hang over the law on probation. Professor Vladimir Utkin, who was director of the Law Institute of Tomsk University, analyzed the work of the probation service in England. There, she prepares a pre-trial report that assesses the risks of illegal behavior, the complexity of social adaptation, etc. And so he came to the conclusion that these reports turned into an empty stupid formality. And that the number of “clients” and employees is simply incommensurable. I hope we don’t repeat this mistake.