More Than a Decade after Kalashnikov, Russian Prisons Still Abysmal

For more than five years, Valeriy Kalashnikov had to share his 17-square-meter prison cell with 24 other inmates; they took turns sleeping on the eight available bunk beds. The overhead lights were never turned off, and inmates could not even count on privacy in the toilet, which was housed inside the cell. Poorly ventilated, the cell’s climate was as extreme as the notorious weather conditions in Russia’s Far East: stiflingly hot in summer and extremely cold during winter. Vermin thrived in the cells.

Kalashnikov developed skin diseases and fungal infections on his feet, hands, and groin. In 2002, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously held that these factors amounted to degrading treatment in violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. 

Kalashnikov v. Russia was the first in what would become an avalanche of judgments condemning conditions and medical care in Russian prisons as inhuman and degrading. However, 13 years and one pilot judgment later, prison conditions in Russia remain at odds with basic human rights standards guaranteed by the European Convention.

By 2012, more than 80 comparable judgments against Russia had been adopted and 250 more were pending. The sheer number of cases that followed Kalashnikov led the court to declare in 2012 that the appalling conditions in Russian prisons were so widespread that they warranted a pilot judgment—a procedure to tackle systemic problems once and for all by addressing the underlying causes, and simultaneously to rid the court’s docket of identical cases arising from the same issue.

Thus, in Ananyev and Others v. Russia, the European Court of Human Rights held that conditions in Russian remand prisons (also known as pretrial detention centers, or SIZOs) amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment of a widespread and systemic nature, and instructed the Russian state to take short-term measures to improve the immediate situation of detainees, tackle overcrowding by reducing the excessive use of pretrial detention, and develop effective domestic legal remedies for those affected.

The execution of both judgments is currently under supervision by the Committee of Ministers, which is the statutory monitoring body for the court’s judgments. In accordance with the committee’s procedures, Russia has proposed an action plan outlining the measures it will take to tackle its deplorable prison conditions.

Yet the measures outlined in the action plan mainly focus on legislative improvements and access to remedies, rather than alleviating the material situation of prisoners. This poses the obvious danger that the legislative reforms result in nothing more than lip-service to the court’s pilot judgment.

Furthermore, more recent European Court judgments suggest that conditions have not improved. The continuing dismal state of Russian prisons is evidenced by the fact that in 2014 alone, Russia has seen 30 judgments against it for violations of Article 3 due to inhuman and degrading prison conditions.

The unimproved—and deadly—state of Russian prisons can be seen in Magnitsky v. Russia. The case concerns a whistleblower who, having disclosed massive embezzlement by law enforcement and tax officials, died of illnesses contracted during pretrial detention in appalling conditions and without access to medical care. The case is currently pending and it will be up to the court to decide whether Magnitsky’s prison conditions and deprivation of medical assistance were deliberately used to silence him, or whether his death was a tragic outcome of the failing Russian penitentiary system.

In a series of more recent judgments, the court has found that Russian prison conditions still do not meet Article 3 requirements. Held in poor prison conditions, one prisoner (Nogin v. Russia) went blind from an untreated diabetic condition, while another (Khloyev v. Russia) saw his diabetes, tuberculosis, and hepatitis C swiftly deteriorate in the absence of appropriate medical care.

In its latest decision [PDF], the Committee of Ministers urged the Russian government to have an effective remedies system in place by the end of 2014. When the government responds later this year, the committee would be well-advised to carefully scrutinize the situation and ascertain whether Russia has moved beyond paper promises and actually improved prison conditions in practice.