Convicts guilty of minor crimes can now serve their time on the sofa

On 10 January, a new type of punishment, not involving incarceration, was introduced in Russia. It is called 'restriction of freedom', or in simple terms, 'house arrest'. On 10 January, the corresponding amendments to the Criminal Code and the Penal Enforcement Code of the Russian Federation came into effect. If courts begin to sentence defendants to house arrest, hundreds of thousands of people could avoid prison. Experts warn: the law is good, but there is no certainty that its implementation will not encounter the usual Russian difficulties. By-laws that would allow for full control over the convicts have not yet been drafted, and the production of electronic bracelets, which would facilitate this supervision, has not been established. Furthermore, human rights activists point out that in many articles of the Criminal Code, house arrest will be used as an additional measure of punishment, which will lead to a worsening of the situation for released prisoners.

Talking about the fact that Russia has an overly large prison population has recently become very fashionable. This is stated not only by human rights activists but also by civil servants. The talk is gradually turning into action. The introduction of house arrest as an alternative measure of punishment is the beginning of a criminal law reform, which was announced at the highest level at the end of last year.

'These amendments to the Criminal Code were being developed back in 1996,' explained Lev Levinson, an expert at the Institute of Human Rights, to *NI*. 'At that time, restriction of freedom as a type of punishment was not adopted. It took more than 10 years for the legislators to agree to this alternative measure of punishment.'

According to the amendments to the Criminal Code, a person sentenced to restriction of freedom will not be able to leave their home at certain times of the day; they will not have the right to change their place of residence, work, or study without notifying the supervisory authority, or to travel anywhere without the permission of the criminal-executive inspection officers who will oversee them. House arrest can be imposed as a primary punishment for a term ranging from two months to four years, and only for crimes of minor or medium severity. Today, about 140,000 people are in prison for such crimes in Russia. Courts will be able to order house arrest for slander, insult, theft, fraud, misappropriation or embezzlement, as well as for other non-grave crimes.

Interestingly, house arrest is already provided for in the Criminal Code as one of five preventive measures. However, judges apply it extremely rarely, preferring to choose actual arrest—detention in custody. 'In my 13 years of judicial experience, I have only placed a defendant under house arrest once,' former judge of the Volgograd Regional Court, Marianna Lukyanovskaya, told *NI*. 'The head of the Volgograd Region Interior Department was accused of abuse of office. He was initially held in custody, and then placed under house arrest. This preventive measure is unpopular among judges. Prosecutors are also always against it, because they fear that the defendant might influence witnesses. For example, he might go to a shop and meet someone there.'

But house arrest as a preventive measure is one thing, and house arrest as a punitive measure is quite another. Mara Polyakova, head of the Independent Expert Legal Council, says that judges are reluctant to apply non-custodial preventive measures because they 'fear that the defendant might flee, and they will run into trouble, or God forbid, be accused of excessive leniency or corruption.'

'As a punitive measure, house arrest is a completely different matter,' Ms Polyakova tells *NI*. 'I think judges will order it for economic crimes or for minor crimes committed by juveniles. Judges will almost certainly be cautioned to apply this measure of punishment with caution. But gradually, it will enter judicial practice, since all judges are guided by the political directives issued by both the Supreme Court and the President.'


Overall, while supporting house arrest as an alternative type of punishment that does not involve incarceration, human rights activists and experts are rather sceptical about the possibilities of its practical implementation.

'I do not yet have confidence that house arrest as a punitive measure will not remain the same 'dead letter' of the law as house arrest as a preventive measure has been until now,' stated Valery Borshchev, chairman of the Public Monitoring Commission of Moscow for places of detention. 'An alternative measure of punishment—corrective labour—has long existed in the Criminal Code, but it is applied very sparingly. And as for house arrest, it is not yet very clear to what extent the existing criminal-executive inspections will be able to ensure control over those sentenced to it. It alarms me that the experiment with the introduction of a system to track convicts using electronic bracelets has dragged on for so long. The European Commission allocated funds for this programme a long time ago. Yet the introduction of electronic bracelets has remained at the experimental stage.'

Incidentally, last autumn, the new head of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) of the Russian Federation, Alexander Reimer, speaking at one of the departmental conferences to his staff, said that the experiment on introducing electronic bracelets in the Voronezh Region settlement colony should conclude in December. The head of the FSIN lamented at the time that bracelets of Israeli manufacture had been used within the framework of the experiment. 'Today there are prototypes produced in the Perm Region which are, in certain respects, of higher quality than the Israeli ones, and, accordingly, their production in our country and application by the Russian FSIN will cost less than imports,' Reimer explained. So, in the near future, it is entirely possible to expect that electronic tracking bracelets manufactured in Perm will appear on the market.

Electronic bracelets are used in many countries around the world. Thanks to the system of signals sent by these bracelets, it is possible to monitor the location of a convict from a distance.

Meanwhile, State Duma deputy Viktor Ilyukhin believes that a considerable amount of time will pass before the practice of house arrest takes root in Russia. 'Courts will be cautious about ordering such a punishment. This is because, for example, those who are caught stealing often have more than one previous conviction,' Mr Ilyukhin explains to *NI*. 'Furthermore, many people do not have a permanent place of residence. And this punishment measure does not suit them at all. And the third point: I fear that all the necessary by-laws have not yet been adopted, and thus it is unclear how to monitor those under house arrest.'

The press secretary of the Russian FSIN, Alexander Kromin, when asked by *NI* about the readiness of the penitentiary department for the introduction of house arrest, promised to provide a comment from the FSIN official heading the criminal-executive inspections at a later time.

Human rights activist Lev Levinson draws attention to the fact that under the new law, restriction of freedom will be applied not only as a primary but also as an additional punishment. 'This is very dangerous,' the activist warns. 'For example, a person served time for theft, but when passing the sentence, the judge imposed restriction of freedom for several years as an additional punishment. And this means that they do not have the right to visit certain places. How can they earn a living without working a side job? And what if they, for instance, intend to sell tomatoes at the market? In this way, former convicts will fall into a vicious circle, and instead of the social rehabilitation promised to them, we will get a formalised police approach.'