Over the past five years, the number of those convicted on charges of disorganizing the activities of institutions that ensure isolation from society (Article 321 of the Criminal Code) has doubled. This information follows from the report of the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court of Russia, SOTA drew attention to it.
So, in 2018, 212 people were convicted under this article, and in 2022 — already 400 people. According to the department, in 2022 the number of convicts according to firstpart of the article amounted to 24 people, according to second— 341, and according to third — 35. In 2021, a total of 320 people were convicted under this article, and in 2020 -m — 282.
Accountability under Article 321 of the Criminal Code is brought not only for organizing protests in correctional institutions or using violence against colony employees, but also in the event of a verbal threat to commit such actions — for example, to use force against a representative of the Federal Penitentiary Service or another prisoner who cooperates with the administration. Punishment under this article involves imprisonment for up to 12 years.
In March, the director of the Federal Penitentiary Service Arkady Gostev said that in 2022 not a single escape of prisoners from correctional colonies and pre-trial detention centers was allowed. “For the first time in the modern history of the penitentiary system, thanks to the coordinated actions of the personnel, escapes from the custody of convicts and persons held in custody were not allowed,” Gostev concluded.
A few months before that, Mediazona drew attention to the fact that in September and October 2022 the number of prisoners in Russian correctional colonies decreased by 23 thousand people. This happened against the background of the recruitment of prisoners in the Wagner PMC to participate in the war in Ukraine.
After that, the Federal Penitentiary Service stopped publishing statistics for some time, and in January reported that the prison population had stopped declining. At the same time, according to April data, by the beginning of 2023, colonies in 35 regions of Russia were missing another 17,000 prisoners.
Wagner Map. By the beginning of the year, colonies in 35 regions of Russia lost 17 thousand prisoners