Yuri Chaika, federal Justice Minister, offered the information to Alvaro Gil-Robles, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights.
Improvement efforts are on. Prisons will get 18 X-ray installations and 160 items of other medical laboratory equipment within the year.
More than a billion rubles has been earmarked to improve prison and detention house living conditions next year, the minister went on. (R28.04/$1 is the Central bank rate for today.)
Educational programs have been launched for inmates-an arrangement that helps prevent relapses into crime. There are impressive statistics to prove the point: the relapse rate for persons who receive education as they are serving prison terms is five- to six-fold below the same for those who do not, pointed out Mr. Chaika.
The Justice Ministry is establishing flexible inmate educational patterns, which include on-line higher education, and by correspondence.
The ministry and the Modern Humanitarian Academy signed a partnership contract, last February, on which four hundred prison inmates are doing extramural studies at the academy. The arrangement involves prisons in close on thirty Russian regions.
The Federal Security Service, or FSB, will soon pass its pre-trial detention prisons under Justice Ministry jurisdiction.
All that shows how conscientious Russia is about the pledges it made before joining the Council of Europe, concluded the minister.
