Murmansk: Children in Prison - Damaging Punishment

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CIZO is the short term for custody prison in Russian. Like all the other prisons in Russia it has got its own number. In CIZO no. 1, there are 650 persons in custody – and 26 of them are under 18 years old. Some have waited months, others one and a half year. Together with representatives from Norwegian and Russian prison administration, Amnesty visits to check up upon the conditions the children are living by.

As we enter the room, Natalia starts using the exercise bicycle she has been placed at for the occasion. She is among the privileged that are permitted to use the prisons exercise room. Even so, the sixteen-year-old girl looks rather misplaced situated between the cold brick walls. She should have been attending ninth grade, but is instead sentenced to a nine-month imprisonment after she got herself into a fight. Natalia prefers not to talk about what happened, but she thinks the punishment is severe.

– I was a little drunk she says and looks down. The fact that Murmansk hasn’t got its own juvenile prison means that the children are sent to Vologda in Karelen. For Natalia it will mean serving her sentence in solitude, far from her parents. – Juvenile prison is not a good solution. The milieu is tough and often the stay becomes the beginning of a criminal career, admits Sergei Babakin, chief of the committee of pardon in Murmansk, who’s also partaking in the tour.

In one of the corridors we meet the prisons young doctor. She hands out the daily dozes of medicine trough a small opening in the cell door. Inside the cell 15 prisoners share ten square meters 23 hours a day. It explains the rank smell. Through the brick wall on the other side of the corridor we can hear the sound of a child crying, and when the reluctant prison guards eventually open the cell door, we see a young girl with a screaming child in her arms. Wet rompers hang to dry on clotheslines in the ceiling. The mother is 18 years old and sentenced for larceny. The child is only 15 months old.

Handicapped behind bars
Outside, in the prison yard nine boys play soccer in the autumn sun. Music flows from a crackling loud speaker. - In contrast to the older inmates, we are allowed two hours in the open air each day, the boys explain. If it is true, it is a huge improvement in comparison with what the boys AmnestyNytt met here one year ago, told us. They where only permitted 20 minuets in the open air each day.

When I ask one of the boys if he has met his lawyer according to his right, he looks uncomprehendingly at me. Nikolai, who’s standing beside me, intervenes and explains that the boy, Yan, is deaf-and-dumb. Nikolai tries with simple finger gestures, to explain the question. Yan shakes his head. The prison governor Abramov admits that Yan doesn’t get any special treatment. The prison administration exchange glances, the guards grow impatient and wants us to proceed. Amnesty’s wish, to speak with the children without the prison guards present, has been categorically refused. When the rest of the group is about to leave, I manage to ask the boys if they play soccer every day. – No, this is the first time since this summer, he answers.