The Tambov prosecutor is your comrade – Newspaper Kommersant No. 147 (7348) of 08/13/2022

The prosecutor’s office of the Tambov region, through the court, ordered the local department of the Federal Penitentiary Service to eliminate the overcrowding of the region’s pre-trial detention centers. Now there are 629 people in two regional pre-trial detention centers with 582 places. However, experts believe that this is not the worst option when compared with other regions.

The prosecutor’s office of the Tambov region revealed a number of violations in local pre-trial detention centers. There are two pre-trial detention centers in the region: one in Tambov – for 267 people, the other in the Michurinsky district – for 315 people. However, on August 9, there were 299 prisoners in the Tambov detention center, and 330 in Michurinsky. The limits were exceeded by 12% and 4.8%, respectively. As a result, the sanitary norms for the area in the cell, which amount to at least four square meters per person, were not observed. The prosecutor’s office told Kommersant about other violations: for example, the Federal Penitentiary Service did not follow the procedure for separating various categories of suspects, accused and convicted.

“On the identified violations, the prosecutor’s office of the region introduced acts of prosecutorial response, but contrary to the requirements of the law, immediate measures to eliminate violations were not taken,” the department says. As a result, the prosecutor’s office filed a lawsuit against the Federal Penitentiary Service with the Soviet District Court of Tambov. On August 11, he was satisfied – and now the service is obliged to eliminate the violations. How she is going to do this, “Kommersant” could not find out: the press service of the regional administration did not answer calls during the day. Kommersant’s interlocutor, close to the department, suggested that all issues with the execution of the court decision would be resolved after it comes into force.

As Kommersant said, the problem of overcrowding in the pre-trial detention center was raised not only by human rights activists and lawyers, but also by the leadership of the Federal Penitentiary Service itself. In May, the department noted the overcrowding of a quarter of all detention centers in the country, in some pre-trial detention centers the limit was exceeded by 29%. Experts explained the problem by the appearance in Russian pre-trial detention centers of a large number of captured citizens of Ukraine, as well as chronic problems of justice: delaying investigative actions and “arrest bias”.

Andrey Kolmakov, a member of the Public Monitoring Commission of the Tambov Region, told Kommersant that he last visited the Tambov pre-trial detention center in May – and it did not seem to him that the detention center was overcrowded: “The head of the pre-trial detention center emphasized that they have a record low number of arrested people for all time. The situation is similar in correctional colonies.” However, Mr. Kolmakov admits that the cells in the pre-trial detention center “cannot be called empty.” However, he suggests that containment breaches may be related to “operational games”: “It’s probably easier to put 20 people in one cell and control five cells than ten cells of ten people.” He believes that in other regions the situation is much worse.

The Tambov lawyer Dmitry Kislinsky is of the same opinion. He told Kommersant that his clients, held in local pre-trial detention centers, do not complain about overcrowding: “They confirm that all places are occupied and there are no empty ones. But there are no complaints, as in the 1990s, when people in isolation wards took turns sleeping.” The lawyer noted that it is often difficult for lawyers to get into the pre-trial detention center in Tambov with their clients because of the queues, and the detention center building itself needs to be reconstructed.

Sergei Tolmachev, Voronezh