The experience of foreign prisons: what can Russia learn
In the prisons of Russia contains 618 490 people. This is comparable to the population of Tyumen, Vladivostok, Makhachkala or Ulyanovsk.
The prison “population” Russia ranks first in Europe.
However, the number of prisoners in the country is falling behind other post-Soviet countries since 2000, according to a review of the Center for strategic research (CSR), which is headed by former Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin.
To put the pardon
The improvement of the prison system and its reform is a complex process, and even developed countries have not developed a single recipe. Somewhere people deprived of freedom more somewhere less.
For example, in Finland in 1971, the grille was off 38% of those convicted of theft and 70% for driving under the influence.
The result peniteniary reforms in 1991, planted in jail, only 11% of the thieves, and for drunken driving in 1981 in jail went only 12% of prisoners.
CSR has carefully studied the experience of Germany, England and Wales (penitenziaria system there is different from other jurisdictions in the UK), as well as South Africa, Finland and Spain.
The main conclusions of the study
- Imprisonment does not correct the offender. A significant proportion of the released again commits crimes and goes to jail;
- Served a prison term of a man difficult to integrate into society after his release;
- From the previous assertions we can make two different conclusions. Since the mid-1960s in the US and UK tried to isolate people from society, resigned, to re-educate them anyway;
- The Finnish authorities, on the contrary, decided that prisons don’t help reduce the harm from crime, but can reduce the social harm resulting from confinement, if less likely to send criminals to jail. Offenders were more likely to issue fines and probation instead of real time, and the last become shorter;
- Mitigation has not led to an increase in crime;
- If society calls for tough punishment of criminals, legislators aim to make punishment more severe, and the judges are more strict sentences. So, for example, occurred in England and Wales. At the same time, stereotypes of citizens can change, as happened in Finland and Spain;
- The prisoners and their families with a bad financial literacy and elementary arithmetic skills. Typically, this population accumulates a lot of debt, and the lack of knowledge on how to cope with this problem, leads to recurrence;
- Every country’s experience is unique and strongly connected with local culture, so reforms should be carried out very cautiously and an eye to the local specifics.
Countryprison Population (per 100 thousand people)*США666Россия428Великобритания as a whole (England and Wales)363 (146)Белоруссия314ЮАР291Израиль265
Турция254
Грузия254
Азербайджан239
Латвия221Казахстан202Польша195
Венгрия185
Ukraine**167
Аргентина167
Португалия135
Испания130
Канада114Франция***
101
Греция89
Швейцария82Германия
76
Norway
74Нидерланды
61
Finland
57
Where more prisoners