Inmates, serving sentences in the institutions of the Russian penitentiary system, communicate with relatives via video communication

On this day, 514 video terminals have been installed in correctional facilities for conducting telephone conversations of inmates with their relatives using video communication equipment. This service is in demand among convicts; they make more than 45 thousand video calls per year.

The video terminal for telephone calls is a monitor with a screen, a handset and a video camera. In fact, this is the same meeting when a convicted person can see and hear his loved one. But at the same time, video calls of convicts with relatives are equated to telephone conversations, the number of which is not limited by law today. Therefore, such communication can occur daily. According to the law, the duration of one video session is 15 minutes.

In connection with the introduction of additional sanitary and anti-epidemic (preventive) measures aimed at preventing the occurrence and spread of a new coronavirus infection (COVID-19) in prisons, the decision of the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia the long and short visits were suspended from March 16, 2020.

At the same time, understanding the importance of maintaining socially useful relations in the context of restrictive measures, as an alternative to dating, the territorial bodies of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia are instructed to use more widely the practice of providing inmates with video meetings via a telecommunication network.

Every year the demand for this service is increasing. For example, in 2019 in the penitentiary institutions of the Krasnoyarsk Territory more than 6 thousand video visits of convicts with relatives were conducted, which is 30% more than in 2018. 1309 virtual dates have already passed this year. And in the maximum-security penal colony No. 9 of the Department of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia in the Republic of Bashkortostan more than 600 video calls were made since the beginning of the year.

It should be noted that about 8.5 thousand telephone sets are installed in the penitentiary system in addition to video terminals, by which inmates make more than 8 million calls annually.

Press service of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia