OREANDA-NEWS. The representatives of the press bureau of the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Russian Federation reported to the journalists of RBC agency that the number of prisoners in penal colonies dropped to 434 thousand people, which became the minimum value in the history of modern Russia.

“On October 1, 2019, 434 thousand prisoners were kept in penal colonies of the penitentiary system of the Russian Federation,” the report says. At the beginning of the year there were more than 463 thousand prisoners. In 2019, the number of prisoners decreased by 29 thousand people, the agency noted. The largest reduction in the number of convicts was recorded in the Sverdlovsk Region (1344 people), in the Perm Territory (1249 people) and in the Krasnoyarsk Region (1172 people).

Besides, in 2019, the number of detainees in investigative isolation wards dropped below 100 thousand people amounting to 98 thousand.

The Federal Penitentiary Service noted that nowadays the number of all persons in the institutions of the penitentiary system is the smallest in the history of modern Russia.

In December 2018, the agency already reported about a minimum number of prisoners. Then the press bureau said that in penal institutions less than 470 thousand people were detained. The agency representatives explained the reduction in the number of prisoners by liberalization of the state’s criminal executive policy.

For comparison, in the beginning of 2013, 588 thousand people were kept in Russian penal colonies, prisons and medical correctional institutions, in 2017 this number was 523 thousand.