Zones of special attention

State Duma deputies propose fining officials for attempts to hinder public control over Russian prisons. On Thursday, the heads of several committees of the lower house, including two main Duma legal experts – Vladimir Pligin and Pavel Krasheninnikov, submitted a bill intended to provide the legal basis for the activities of public monitoring commissions that oversee the observance of prisoners’ rights.

To this end, the deputies propose making a series of amendments to several codes (the Criminal Executive Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure, and the Code of Administrative Offences) and to a number of federal laws. The authors explain that after the adoption of these changes, the law that came into force back in June of the year before last should work in full – ‘On Public Control over Ensuring Human Rights in Places of Detention and on Assisting Persons Held in Places of Detention’.

According to the deputies, the adoption of amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Code of Administrative Offences, and other basic codes and laws is caused by the “necessity of creating legal foundations for the institute of public control.” Note that since June 2008 – the moment the law on control over the observance of prisoners’ rights was adopted – a number of notable events have occurred in this area. The leadership of the Federal Penitentiary Service has changed, the start of a prison reform was announced, and the recently enacted law on house arrest became a part of this. It should also not be forgotten that last year, the situation of convicts and ‘inmates’ of pre-trial detention centres became a topic for broad public discussion, one of the reasons for which was the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky of the Heritage Capital Management fund in a pre-trial detention centre (this incident, let us recall, also led to large-scale dismissals in the leadership of the Federal Penitentiary Service).

One of the reasons why the situation of those under investigation and convicts leaves much to be desired has repeatedly been cited as the lack of transparency of the Russian penitentiary system.

“The law on public control is in effect, monitoring commissions have been created in 70 regions of Russia, but we have become convinced, including over the past year, that there is open obstruction of the activities of the monitoring commissions,” said Valery Borshchev, chairman of the Moscow Public Monitoring Commission for places of detention, to ‘Vremya Novostei’. Moreover, the interviewee of the newspaper emphasises, human rights defenders face obstacles not only in some distant regions but also in the capital. “For example, despite all our good relations with the leadership of the Moscow Main Internal Affairs Directorate, the Internal Affairs Directorate for the Central District, headed by Major General Pyotr Pavlyuk, does not let members of the public monitoring commission into police stations,” Mr Borshchev noted. “At the ‘Meshchanskoye’ and ‘Kitay-gorod’ police departments, they simply took us and did not let us in, which is a direct violation of the law. When we started drafting an act on obstruction, they realised that the matter was serious and finally gave permission.” Thus, Mr Borshchev states, the problem of the accountability of officials for obstacles to the work of public monitoring commissions has truly become urgent.

The amendments submitted yesterday to the State Duma for consideration by deputies Pligin, Krasheninnikov, Vasilyev, and Popov, among other things, establish “measures of administrative liability for officials for obstructing the exercise of public control.” It is assumed that members of the monitoring commissions should also be held accountable in case of their violation of the requirements of criminal executive legislation. Among other things, the deputies propose stipulating the procedure for summoning a member of a public monitoring commission as a suspect or accused person; for this, among other things, the secretary of the Public Chamber and the relevant public monitoring commission should be notified.

The bill establishes the procedure and conditions for visits by public commissions to prisons and pre-trial detention centres. In the absence of clearly written norms, the management of these institutions often acts at its own discretion, notes Valery Borshchev. “For example, in a number of cases, we were not given documents necessary for the exercise of public control. We encountered this not only in some Moscow pre-trial detention centres (where even the price list in the grocery kiosks turned out to be ‘classified’), but also in police stations, where they refused to provide the book of detainees,” states the head of the Moscow Public Monitoring Commission. In Mr Borshchev’s opinion, the process of ‘legal education’ of representatives of the penitentiary system should end. Now it is necessary, in case of violations, to act through courts and prosecutors’ offices and thus accustom officials to obey the law.