Director of the Federal Penitentiary Service Arkady Gostev: Allow me to briefly report on the service’s activities under current conditions. Our work is taking place against the backdrop of a significant decrease in the prison population, driven by several factors, including the ongoing humanisation of criminal policy.
The system of correctional centres is operating effectively and delivering positive results. A total of 400 centres have been established with a combined capacity of 50,000 inmates; in practice, a little over 30,000 individuals are currently held there.
Work in this area continues and is yielding results, particularly in the socialisation and resocialisation of offenders. Individuals in correctional centres are permitted to leave the facilities, travel independently to their workplaces, and earn a fair wage, which enables them to compensate for the harm caused by their crimes.
Alongside this system, the implementation of the Federal Law on Probation is also making a notably positive contribution.
We help inmates access medical services and begin preparing them for release almost from the moment they get into a pretrial detention centre. This approach has been one of the factors contributing to the overall reduction in the prison population.
Despite the decline in recorded crime, we maintain active cooperation with the internal affairs agencies and the Federal Security Service, primarily to ensure the security of people in detention and to help solve crimes, most often those are prior offences. This cooperation remains very close.
In 2022, we held our first joint board meeting with the Interior Ministry in many years to address two key issues: crime prevention and crime detection. We maintain regular working contacts, particularly with the criminal investigation department. Our cooperation with the FSB also continues, especially in the areas of countering extremism and terrorism.
We started to work actively with the report by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill to you on creating corresponding positions. Our 85 territorial bodies now have the position of an assistant to the head of the territorial body for relations with religious believers. We have created 205 positions of assistants to heads of pretrial detention centres and staffed them quickly enough. Today we have 218 such assistants working. In addition, Mr Chuychenko [Minister of Justice] reported to you on the results of creating such positions – assistants to heads of these institutions – in penal establishments, but not in all of them. We have many of them and it is simply not possible to find the clergymen so fast. Together we decided that they will go to 11 correctional facilities, seven prisons, curative and correctional institutions. All in all, to 83 facilities.
As for the second aspect of our activities – production: despite the reduction in the number of inmates, we are taking additional measures to help the convicts find employment faster.
Vladimir Putin: They do work, don’t they?
Arkady Gostev: Yes. At the moment, 91.5–91.6 percent of them are employed. It brings favourable results in general for the penitentiary system development, and we are also working on special tasks.
This work continues and yields results. In 2024, the total amount of services rendered and products made exceeded 47 billion rubles. These indicators are good enough.
The major line is the light industry, of course. We manufacture uniforms for the Interior Ministry, the National Guard, the Emergencies Ministry, bailiffs, and the Taxation Service. So the range is wide enough.
We have achieved some results in implementing the Federal Targeted Programme as well, although it is difficult. Unfortunately, contractors often fail to meet their responsibilities. The amount of investments is about 2.2 billion a year. Of course, this is too little for such a huge entity as ours. Still, over the course of three years we put 16 facilities into operation.
This year we plan to put into operation, ahead of schedule, a pretrial detention centre for 1,000 individuals in Kazan. It was built in a short period of time.