There are 27 commercial organizations in Russia that allow citizens to send emails to prisoners. But not all are delivered quickly; This procedure can take months. The main reason why it takes so long for a letter to be delivered to a convicted person is the intense workload of censorship experts who check incoming texts for the content of prohibited information. St. Chairman of the St. Petersburg Public Monitoring Commission (POC) Georgy Krasavtsev told socialbites.ca about this.
“The fact that letters do not reach the detainees for a long time is due to the workload of the censors. For example, St. Take SIZO-1 “Cross” in St. Petersburg. Five thousand prisoners. About half of them receive emails every day. At the same time, there are about 10 censors who have to check all these texts. “When we come to them for an inspection, people’s offices have stacks of printed letters taller than a human height,” Krasavtsev said.
According to Krasavtsev, some citizens abuse the opportunity to send letters to prisoners. As an example, he cited a case where a girl sent 18 emails to a convict in one evening. However, he was unhappy because it was not delivered in one day.
“Of course, a significant part of the people understand that the prison is not a pioneer camp, and therefore they write to the prisoners regularly, but not every day,” he added.
Read more about what services people serving time in Russian prisons have access to in socialbites.ca’s exclusive material.