Comparative Criminal Law and Enforcement: Russia - Sentencing And The Prison System

On 1 July 1997, the "Criminal-Execution Code of the Russian Federation" was passed. In light of the notoriously brutal conditions in prison camps during Soviet times, the new Code explicitly lays out the rights and duties of prisoners. With some exception, persons sentenced to imprisonment are required to serve their sentences in correctional institutions within the territory of the Russian Federation in which they lived or were sentenced. Most sentenced prisoners do their time performing hard labor in "correctional colonies" with various levels of regimes depending on the severity of the crime committed.

In 1998 Russia imprisoned 700 persons per 100,000 population, the second highest rate in the world after Rwanda, slightly higher than the United States (668 per 100,000) and around fifteen times higher than in most European countries. As of 1 July 1997, the total prison population in Russia was 1,017,848, of which 275,567 were in pretrial detention centers intended for a maximum of 182,358 detainees. To alleviate the overcrowding of Russia's prisons the State Duma adopted an amnesty law on 18 June 1999 to compel the release of around 100,000 detainees and prisoners. Tuberculosis caused the death of 178 prisoners out of every 100,000 in 1995. In 1998 nearly 100,000 prisoners were diagnosed as being infected with the disease, 10 percent of the total number of inmates, and thirty thousand have an untreatable and deadly form thereof. Overall, 720 of every 100,000 prisoners died in confinement in 1995, a great number thereof from tuberculosis, asphyxiation, and suicide.