The State Duma considered the amnesty untimely due to a record decrease in the number of prisoners

Russia recorded a historical minimum number of prisoners. Now there are 400,000 people in places of deprivation of liberty, said Irina Pankina, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on State Building and Legislation, citing data from the Federal Penitentiary Service. In this regard, the head of the committee, Pavel Krasheninnikov, called the amnesty untimely.

As Irina Pankina said during the discussion of the bill of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation on amnesty, according to the Federal Penitentiary Service, as of February 1, 2023, there were about 400 thousand people in prison. “This has never happened in principle,” the deputy added.

Pavel Krasheninnikov at the same meeting noted that the decrease in the number of convicts in places of deprivation of liberty was influenced, among other things, by the amendments to Art. 72 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (calculation of terms of punishments and offset of punishment). In his opinion, “to carry out an amnesty is untimely.”

For 2022, the number of prisoners in the FSIN system decreased per 32 thousand people: as of January 1, 2023, there were 433 thousand prisoners in the penitentiary system. The number of prisoners dropped sharply in the fall, when there were reports of the recruitment of PMC “Wagner” prisoners to participate in hostilities in Ukraine. In February 2023, PMC founder Yevgeny Prigozhin announced the end of the recruitment of prisoners.

March 25, 13 months after the start of the military conflict in Ukraine, Evgeny Prigozhin informedthat more than 5 thousand convicts served under the contract and received a pardon. According to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the recruitment of prisoners in the PMC “Wagner” has reduced crime by 10-20 times.

Anastasia Larina