Federal Penitentiary Service

Color coating of a FSIN vehicle (GAZelle).

The Federal Penitentiary Service is considered to be successor to the Main Prison Administration, established on 27 February 1879 as the first government body dealing with maintenance and security of detention and prison facilities in the Russian Empire. On 13 December 1895, the Main Prison Administration was transferred from the Interior Ministry to the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Empire. Following the October Revolution, a new prison administration was established by the Bolsheviks with a system composed mainly of forced labor camps across the Soviet Union. On 7 April 1930, the Gulag agency was established which oversaw an expansion of the labor camp system in the Soviet Union. In 1960, the Main Administration for Execution of Punishments (GUIN) was founded under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union following the dissolution of the Gulag agency. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia maintained GUIN unchanged as part of its own Ministry of Internal Affairs until 1998, when the prison service was returned to the Ministry of Justice after nearly a century. The FSIN was established in 2004 as part of various administrative reforms occurring in Russia reforming executive bodies from 2004 to 2005, maintaining the GUIN name but specially re-created for the Ministry of Justice. In 2006, the FSIN received its current name as the Federal Service for the Execution of Punishments (Russian: Федеральная служба исполнения наказаний (ФСИН)) under the Russian Ministry of Justice. The FSIN is commonly known in English as the Federal Penitentiary Service.

The main tasks of the FSIN are:

• the execution, in accordance with Russian legislation penal, detention of persons suspected or accused of committing crimes, and defendants;
• control the behavior of probationers and prisoners, which the court granted a deferment sentence;
• ensuring the protection of the rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of convicts and persons in custody;
• ensuring law and order in the institutions, enforcing criminal penalties of imprisonment (hereinafter - institutions executing punishment), and in detention centers, security contained in them convicts, persons in custody, as well as employees of the correctional system, officials and citizens in the territories of these institutions and detention facilities;
• protecting and escorting prisoners and persons detained on the specified routes escort, convoy of Russian citizens and stateless persons on the territory of the Russian Federation, as well as foreign citizens and stateless persons in the case of their extradition;
• a prisoners and detainees in detention, detention conditions, in accordance with international law, provisions of international treaties and federal laws;
• The organization of the activities to provide assistance to convicted in social adaptation;
• management of the territorial bodies of the FSIN directly subordinate agencies.

FSIN Special Forces during a FAB Defense training exercise

The FSIN is headed by the Director of the Federal Penitentiary Service, who is appointed and dismissed by the President of Russia on the recommendation of the Prime Minister of Russia. The Director is authorized to have six deputies, including one first deputy, who are appointed and dismissed by the President.

• Yuri Kalinin (2004-2009)
• Alexander Reimer (2009-2012) - appointed by President Dmitry Medvedev, the first to head the federal prison system without previous service.
• Gennady Kornienko (2012–present) - appointed by President Vladimir Putin.[2]
• Arkadiy Gostev has been director since 2021.[3][4]

In 2007, Rabbi Aharon Gurevich was appointed the chief military rabbi, the first time to hold this position in Russia since 1917, serving as the chief rabbi for Jewish inmates and officers in Russian federal prison system.

The number of prisoners per 100,000 citizens by country.[5][6]

As of March 2019, the FSIN was responsible for 558,778 inmates, including pre-trial detainees. Only 8% of prisoners in Russia were female, and 0.2% were juvenile offenders. As of 2018, Russia had one of the highest incarceration rates in the world at 416 per 100,000 people with a prison population ranked fourth behind the United States, China, and Brazil. Before 2000 Russia was ranked as having the highest incarceration rate per 100,000 people internationally until it was overtaken by the United States. between 2000 and 2018, Russia’s prison population dropped substantially with a decline of over 400,000 inmates, thanks among other factors, to the socioeconomic reforms and overall increase in standards and quality of life.

The FSNI operated 705 places of worship within its facilities for inmates of various faiths including Orthodoxy, Islam, Buddhism, and Catholicism.

As of 2019, the FSIN operated 954 facilities of various types located across Russia. The majority of prisons are "corrective labor colonies", a type of penal colony that combines detention with compulsory work introduced during the Soviet era, but also operates a number of traditional prisons.

• Media related to Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia at Wikimedia Commons
• Official website (in Russian)
• Official Community VKontakte (in Russian)