I was surprised to read that the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation is preparing to allow prisoners to wear glasses. Are glasses really banned in colonies and pre-trial detention centers? I never thought that in addition to jail, prisoners should be deprived of the opportunity to read, including their own cases, which they are required by law to recognize during the investigation. Glasses are such a natural and necessary thing in our life that it seemed impossible to do without them. What about people with weak eyes who can’t see well not only the letters in the books but also the surrounding objects? How does production work? For example sewing workshops? I started researching this topic and this is what I found.
In fact, glasses are not exactly prohibited in places of detention, and if they were not taken from a prisoner during detention (and they can be, I will explain why later), he may use glasses. However, if he does not have glasses with him or if his glasses are broken, broken or no longer fit, he can wear new glasses only according to the prescription written by the prison ophthalmologist at the health unit. The prisoner must write a statement accepted by the medical unit (and how is it written without glasses?). If the application is signed, if the vision is checked, relatives can wear glasses, on the day approved by the program, when the doctor receives a medical transfer, they can come and pass to them. It seems that the plan is grueling but understandable. But in practice it turns out differently.
Let’s start with the fact that it is not always possible for a prisoner to make an appointment with an ophthalmologist: the queues are long and there are not enough specialists. There are not equipped rooms everywhere and our prisons are overcrowded. Even in Moscow, there are only two ophthalmological rooms in the UFSIN system, equipped in accordance with the standards of medical care. They promise that one day they will open the third one… “I was not allowed to take one of the glasses boxes to the temporary detention center in Petrovka. They said they have irons. Later, when they were transferred to the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention center of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service, they were only allowed to take the first of the two glasses (for reading and giving) for the same reason. ”, theatrical producer Alexei Malobrodsky, who was involved in the Seventh Studio case, told Izvestia. Only after a few months at SIZO did she manage to get an appointment with an ophthalmologist. But the glasses ordered by the prison doctor’s prescription did not fit him.”
In other words, prisoners with vision problems are forced to stay without glasses for months. In addition, not all prisoners have relatives who can tamper with the purchase or manufacture of glasses. Ordinary citizens, visually impaired people can be given free glasses, but this is not applied in prison. Despite human rights activists realizing, the court sentences inmates to jail time rather than deprivation of sight. But glasses are considered a dangerous item because the frames and handles can be metal and prisoners are not allowed to have metal objects. Glass can also be a weapon. Therefore, glasses (both lenses and frames) and a case for them should be made of plastic and not have metal parts. Glasses can be removed during detention if the frame contains metal.
In general, if society now accepts, then inmates “will be able to have glasses with metal frames with plastic lenses and fabric (plastic) cases for glasses.” “The permit applies, in particular, to suspects and defendants sentenced to forced labor who are held in a punishment cell, sentenced to deprivation of liberty, sentenced to imprisonment, as well as placed in buildings for violators.” So glasses, toothpaste and soap can be delivered to prisoners in a normal package along with panties and toilet paper. In other words, one more step has been taken for a humane attitude towards criminals and only those who are suspected of committing crimes.
The Ministry of Justice has already shown leniency this year – it has approved the permission to take a daily shower for pregnant women, women with young children, people with disabilities from groups I and I. The remaining batches of imprisoned souls are given twice a week.
Generally, women are treated more gently. There are no special or strict regime colonies for them, only general and residential colonies. Women’s colonies are much calmer, relations between inmates and the administration are generally more cooperative than confrontational, and the level of aggression in them is lower.
In our country, the question of the essence of punishment for people who commit crimes of varying severity is not often raised, especially among experts. Although in our country there are now many more prisoners than in most countries of the world. But they are working on it, there is progress, in 2004 there were 810 prisoners for every 100 thousand Russians, from 2017 to 2018 their number fell to 418 per 100 thousand, in 2021 the figure was 356 (which is still three times higher) Europe’ in).
It often seems to ordinary people that the fate of the prisoners has nothing to do with them, because the criminals sit in prison, and the prison is not a cure, but must be bad, uncomfortable there: otherwise what is the meaning of punishment? But in fact society and its degree of development are controlled by three basic institutions – the school, the army, the prison. The meaning of prison and conviction has been explained in different ways at different times. In archaic societies, criminals were punished publicly, as an education to the rest, the death penalty was a magnificent spectacle, and humiliation and moral destruction were accompanied by a physical change in the body. The authorities got rid of those who violated the law, expelled them from the ranks of decent citizens, including by stigmatizing them, cutting off their hands, tongues, ears. Later deportation was replaced by re-education. The idea of isolating criminals and forced labor for them was based on the assumption that breaking the law was the result of improper social development, inability to work and earn one’s own bread, so violators must first be taught forced labor. , under surveillance, then attracts earnings. Thus, their characters develop and they will be able to make a living on their own after being released. Hence the tradition of compulsion to discipline: an early rise, a strict routine, asceticism in everyday life. The same goals undertook hygiene skills, a separate bed cleaned during the day, replacing rags with special prison clothes, replacing outside food for general nutrition.
The society, represented by elected citizens who came to the prisons, monitored the industriousness and behavior of the prisoners, and rewarded those who stood out with release. Thus, prison was ideally presented as a place where a person entered the path of correction, under the supervision and care of the community. But this is ideal. In practice, the new type of prisons immediately began to be criticized, that the prison does not fix, mutilates, and when the prisoners are released, cannot adapt to it, where not only the prisoners, but the power of the administration and the guards shift to lawlessness. And then a new, expensive concept of psychological treatment and social cohesion emerged.
In pre-revolutionary Russia, the prison was traditionally perceived as an instrument of torture, a place of trial and eventually a “dead house”, hard work from which a person should not be healed, but after passing through humiliation. He atones for his guilt by suffering. In Soviet Russia, penal colonies of the European model dominated, but communist morality replaced the God who healed the conscience of criminals in his name.
Makarenko’s “Pedagogical Poetry” voiced the collective as the best educator and proposed the joint responsibility of everyone, for each and for each. Echoes of this then fashionable theory feed into today’s prison philosophy.
Humanizing the conditions of detention of prisoners is a very important part of state policy, but no measure will help make the penal system effective if society does not consider why and for what all this work is being done. complete. Who are the guards – punishers, parents, teachers, psychologists, commanders? Which is more important – isolating criminals from society or correcting them? And if it’s fixed, how? Discipline and coercion? By the influence of the boy-child collective, from which its own primitive hierarchy and its own prison values emerged? Psychological help?
A shower, glasses, an individual bed, the possibility of solitude, the possibility of education – these are details of the system whose meaning is hardly considered by people who live in the wild and will not break the law. Russian proverb says, don’t give up on jail and bag, anything can happen. Also, while the total number of prisoners was falling (there were half a million people in the colonies at the end of 2022), pre-trial detention centers in Russia were overcrowded and the occupancy rate of pre-trial detention centers in Russia was 96% (as of August 1, 2022). , 114,172 people were held in Russian pre-trial detention centres, while the isolation wards in the country were designed for a total of 118,495 detainees), Moscow, St. Petersburg , Stavropol and Krasnodar regions clearly do not have enough places.
“Matrosskaya Tishina” cells in Moscow are overcrowded by 43%, there are more than 600 “extra” prisoners. In July 2022, Eva Merkacheva, member of the Presidential Council for Human Rights and PMC, concludes that in the third building, where people sleep on the floor, “the cells and corridors are lined with fungus, black toilets and rusty pipes.” conditions in the pre-trial detention centre. And in the pre-trial detention center, there are not convicts, but those under investigation. Hopefully by 2023 – at least with glasses.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.