Anna Karetnikova

25 September 2025

by Anna Karetnikova

Source: Facebook

The FSIN [Federal Penitentiary Service] deputy director talked about how in several regions the staffing shortage in the UIS [criminal correctional system] has reached 50%, and in some regions 70. That is, one person is doing the work of two or three. I would point out that these are not the guards; that is the last place a shortage is allowed. These are the people who are supposed to hand out packages, take people to the shower, pick up the mail, carry out assignments, and all those everyday things. The regular routine and the counselors. So that the shortfall creates inconveniences and even suffering among both prisoners and employees.

I wonder, of course, whether FSIN now in general is reducing staff; there are many fewer prisoners, after all. But not in remand centres, where as before and even more so there is an excess of detainees. A rather alarming situation overall. When I was working, the staffing shortfall was kept to about 20 percent. Now it’s 50 and 70…

Now I will quote from Kommersant.

‘In several regions, the staffing shortfall in the criminal correctional system is as high as 50%’, FSIN Deputy Director Aleksandr Rozin reported. According to his information, the situation in individual UIS organs ‘is close to critical’, and on average the country’s staffing shortage is 37.8%.

As Mr. Rozin said at the All-Russian Coordinating Council of Human Rights Representatives, the Tula Oblast FSIN Administration, for example, has a shortfall of as much as 70%. ‘I want to emphasize in addition that we are working in difficult conditions today. Everyone well knows, too, that we are rendering significant assistance to the Defense Ministry, among others, in building up the armed forces. And we will continue that work, of course’, the deputy director said (quoted from Interfaks).

This March, FSIN Director Arkady Gostev, reporting on his department’s work over the past year, stated that personnel are performing their tasks in conditions of ‘significant shortage’. He presented data then: the personnel deficit had reached 23% (53,900 people), and in certain categories the shortage of personnel exceeds 40% of the necessary number. Meanwhile, more than 3,500 former and current FSIN employees have decided to take part in military actions in Ukraine. Of these, 249 have suffered wounds, trauma, and contusions, and another 343 people have died’.

Translated by Marian Schwartz