The bill on the resettlement of prisoners in a colony with a shortage of labor sent to the government

The head of the economic committee of the Federation Council, Andrey Kutepov, sent a bill to the government for conclusion, which proposes to give the Federal Penitentiary Service the right to resettle prisoners in colonies where there is a shortage of labor.

The bill, according to “RIA News”, proposes to supplement Article 73 of the Criminal Executive Code of the Russian Federation (“Places of serving deprivation of liberty”). According to the amendments, a person sentenced to deprivation of liberty may be transferred to another penal colony of the closest subject of the Russian Federation, in which there are conditions for his employment.

The explanatory note notes that in a number of correctional institutions of the Federal Penitentiary Service there is a shortage of labor resources from among those sentenced to imprisonment. In particular, in the Republics of Karelia, Komi, Mordovia, the Udmurt Republic, the Chuvash Republic, the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Arkhangelsk, Belgorod, Kirov, Kostroma, Kursk, Moscow, Orel, Penza regions.

At the same time, in the colonies of a number of constituent entities of the Russian Federation, there is no possibility of 100% employment of prisoners due to a sufficient amount of labor resources. Among them are correctional institutions in the Republics of Bashkortostan and Tatarstan, Altai, Primorsky, Stavropol Territories, Amur, Volgograd, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Samara, Saratov, Sverdlovsk, Tambov, Tula, Tyumen, Chelyabinsk Regions, as well as in the Kemerovo Region.

According to Mr. Kutepov, work during the period of punishment ensures a faster resocialization of the prisoner, due to the fact that the convict does not lose skills and can continue production activities after release.

In January 2022, President Vladimir Putin supported the idea to replace a prison term with corrective labor for 100,000 convicts. The issue has been actively discussed since the summer of 2021, when at that time the head of the Federal Penitentiary Service, Alexander Kalashnikov, suggested more actively using prisoners in those areas that usually involve labor migrants. The initiative was supported by the head of the Ministry of Justice Konstantin Chuichenko, the head of the Human Rights Council Valery Fadeev, the Ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova, the head of the Investigative Committee of Russia Alexander Bastrykin and Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin, as well as 71% of Russian residents who are not serving sentences in places of deprivation of liberty (data VTsIOM).

Erdni Kagaltynov