According to the human rights project «Open Space», since the start of the full-scale war in 2022, 88 FSIN institutions in Russia have filed for liquidation. These include pre-trial detention centers, juvenile colonies, and even one of the eight prisons.
As reported by «Important Stories» citing official FSIN data, as of January 1, 2022, there were 465,000 people in places of detention. In the fall of 2022, amid open recruitment of convicts for the war, the agency stopped publishing detailed statistics. At the beginning of 2023, FSIN still updated the official data — 433,006 people. And already in October of the same year, Deputy Minister of Justice Vsevolod Vukolov announced the number of 266,000 at a meeting in Cheboksary — Russia has never had so few detainees.
However, later SPCH member Eva Merkacheva gave a different assessment: by the beginning of 2025, the number of prisoners in Russia reached a historic low of 313,000 people, of which 87,000 are in pre-trial detention centers. Based on these figures, during the full-scale war against Ukraine, the prison population in the FSIN system could have decreased by 150,000 people.
If we consider the figure actually announced by Vukolov — by 200,000 or more. This figure is also agreed upon by the founder of the «Sitting Russia» foundation Olga Romanova**, who noted that FSIN classified the numbers so that no one could calculate how many prisoners were recruited to the front.
Former FSIN analyst Anna Karetnikova** comes to the same conclusions in a conversation with «Important Stories»: «[With sending to war] the reduction in the number of prisoners is undoubtedly related. The loss of the prison population over the last three years is much greater than in previous years.»
At the same time, FSIN claims that the reduction in the number of prisoners is due to «the widespread use of alternative punishments, without imprisonment, and in general with the liberalization of the penal policy.»
However, Anna Karetnikova believes that the reduction in prisoners is not related to humanization. Moreover, after amendments were adopted allowing contracts to be signed with the Ministry of Defense at the investigation stage, some prisoners simply did not reach the court, and pre-trial detention centers remain overcrowded.
* Recognized in Russia as a «foreign agent» and «undesirable» organization.
** Recognized in Russia as «foreign agents».