kvs wrote:franco wrote: Number of prisoners in Russia hits record low
Russia enjoys a record-low number of inmates, thanks to “humanization” of the penal code, deputy chief of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) has said, adding that the number of jailed people is expected to shrink further. Over the past few years, the number of inmates in Russia has dropped by nearly 250,000, the FSIN deputy head, Valeriy Maksimenko, told journalists on Friday.
Currently, 467,000 people are serving jail terms, which is the lowest number in modern Russian history.
Apart from that, some 100,000 are in pre-trial and police custody, Maksimenko added. While the figure appears to be quite big, the number of such people actually shrank two-fold, compared to six years ago.
The decline in the number of the prisoners is the tangible result of “humanization” of Russian legislation, the official said. The number of inmates is expected to shrink further, as the authorities seek to put people behind bars only for capital offences, committed “against individual or state.”
A new law, signed by Vladimir Putin this summer, has also contributed to the reduction of inmate numbers, according to Maksimenko. The legislation has set new rules for re-calculating time spent in pre-trial detention into jail days after sentencing. A day spent in pre-trial custody now counts as 1.5 days in jail for general security prisoners and as two days for low-security ones. For maximum and special-security prisoners, sentenced for serious and violent crimes, however, it goes day-for-day only. The new legislation has had a retroactive effect, and convicts had their jail time re-calculated according to the new rules.
Proof that Russia is under the tyranny of Putin.
I put forth the claim that the size of the prison population is a metric on the real political and economic freedom of a country subject to one caveat.
That the population is not conforming to some cultural behaviour pattern like Japan and is a non-conforming type of culture like in Russia. But even
Japan would experience a crime wave if it underwent the economic depression that Russia experienced in the 1990s.
The US clearly fails at being a democracy and real economic paradise. Even it being a police state with cops shooting unarmed blacks in the back
clearly does not act to reduce its prison population and actually increases prisoner numbers. Russian cops and their kid gloves treatment of
gross law violators like Navalny and his lemmings who used to block major streets even though they had demonstration permits for more sane
venues shows that power has a certain level of respect for the population. This power is actually trying to reduce the number of prisoners
instead of stuff jails full of inmates to enrich their corporate buddies.
You do realize Russia hands out low sentences for crimes right?. You can go watch Russian prison documentaries for example where they say "Thus guy killed like three people, he will be here for 15 years".
That statistic isn't impressive when you realize just how soft they are are handing out sentences, you have to do some REALLLLLY fucked up n Russia to get a life sentence.