The Ministry of Justice proposed to issue leggings and pajamas to women in colonies – Kommersant

The Ministry of Justice proposed expanding the list of items that are given to female prisoners in colonies. The ministry’s draft stipulates that female prisoners will be allowed to have skirts, dressing gowns and pajamas. This is reported by TASS with reference to the draft amendments to the order of the department “On approval of norms of clothing allowances for persons sentenced to imprisonment and persons held in pre-trial detention centers.”

“In norm No. 4 of the clothing allowance for convicts serving sentences in correctional colonies, as well as in paragraph 4 of Appendix No. 4 to the order, indicate: “suit (jacket and skirt)”, “nightshirt or pajamas”, “wool-blend tights or leggings” , “home robe,” says the project document. Point 4 applications about clothing allowance concerns convicts serving sentences in educational colonies. In the 2013 decree, these items were not included in the list of clothing allowances and were not given to underage female prisoners.

The project also proposes replacing the wool-blend scarf, which is used as a headdress, with a winter hat. According to Alexei Melnikov, a member of the Human Rights Council and executive secretary of the Public Monitoring Commission (POC) of Moscow, the POC “repeatedly received such requests in personal conversations with convicts.”

“We can definitely say that this is a small but important step towards making women in places of forced detention a little more comfortable, both from an emotional and health point of view,” Mr. Melnikov wrote in Telegram.

Recently, the Ministry of Justice informed Kommersant about the introduction of the ability for prisoners to read electronic books and download materials of their criminal cases onto electronic media (without access to the Internet). Member of the Moscow Public Monitoring Committee Sergei Aristov said that he and his colleagues are trying to support this initiative by donating electronic books to pre-trial detention centers, but “a set of measures is needed for the initiative to fully work, and for this a budget must be allocated.”

Read more about this in the Kommersant article – “A book is the best weld.”

Arseny Pushkin