Russia’s Prison Population Rapidly Aging and Its Jailors are Profiting, ‘Cherta’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 9 – Because younger prisoners are going to fight in Ukraine, Russia’s prison population is growing older, something its jailors welcome because older prisoners are typically easier to intimidate and control and because jailors are entitled to confiscate as much as half of the pensions older prisoners have earned, the Cherta news portal says.

            In 2010, fewer than one in a hundred Russians behind bars was over 60. By 2020, that figure had risen to almost twice that level; and it is certainly higher now, according to those involved in the defense of prisoner rights in the first instance because younger prisoners choose to escape jail and go to war (cherta.media/story/pomresh-i-pomresh/).

            But there are other more sinister explanations as well, these experts say. Under Russian law, Russia’s penal institutions are entitled to seize up to 50 percent of pensions that elderly pensioners may have earned, something that limits the ability of these prisoners to get medicines and special foods they need and that enriches the jailors.

            And because elderly and often ill prisoners are easier to intimidate and thus control, Russia’s jailors find it easier to control such people, often by threatening to restrict access to medicines and doctors or even doing so by shuttering stores and preventing doctors from gaining access to elderly prisoners in need.

            As specialists in prisoner rights point out, there is no concept of “pensioner” in Russian laws governing prisoners, and Russian jails and courts rarely grant early release even to those prisoners in the most dire conditions. Instead, the jailors continue to hold them and profit from doing so at the expense of one of the most defenseless groups in Russia society.