More than 1,500 convicts and suspects appealed to Mr. Lukin within the year's first nine months alone. 7,431 have been reinstated in their lawful rights. Most complaints concern administrative officers and prison authorities trespassing the law. Many report bad food and accommodations, beatings, inadequate health services, and utter lack of cleanliness.
Things have improved, somewhat, within recent years, acknowledged the ombudsman.
He introduced to the gathering a commentary, fresh from print, on the law, "On the Custody of Criminal Suspects and Indicted Persons". Lukin described it as "essential reading for legal experts, law enforcement officers, and the public-at-large, especially those who have the ill luck of getting into the clutches of our penitentiary network". He promised to do all he could for prison libraries to obtain the book.
Oleg Filimonov, second in charge of the federal Justice Ministry penitentiary board, also addressed the conference. The Russian penitentiary system vouches to comply with international organisations' recommendations and international prison living standards, he reassured.
Prisons are turning into a kind of hospitals, the ministerial functionary bitterly remarked. The number of convicts has been shrinking within these several years-but there are ever more invalids among them. Thus, Russian convict camps presently have 615,000 inmates. 500,000 of them have had chronic diseases. The number of convicted alcoholics, drug addicts, HIV carriers and tubercular patients is skyrocketing. 56,000 present-day convicts have TB and 36,000 HIV, he warned.
The Justice Ministry spares no efforts to obtain medical licenses for prison hospitals. Meanwhile, only a half have such licenses.
Next year's federal budget earmarks 61 billion roubles, slightly more than two billion US dollars, to keep up the entire Russian penitentiary system, added Mr. Filimonov.
