First Prison For Moscow Since Tsars

Moscow's first new prison since tsarist times will open by the end of the month, city police spokeswoman Lidia Rogotkina said Monday.Major General Yury Kalinin, head of the Interior Ministry's correctional department, told Interfax the new prison near Vodny Stadion in northern Moscow would relieve overcrowding in city jails, where the average inmate now has a mere 90 square centimeters of living space.Despite its reputation as a builder of prisons, the Soviet regime tore down three in Moscow and did not replace them, "because they believed crime rates ought to decline under Soviet power," said Valery Abramkin, head of Moscow's Center for Prison Reform.Kalinin said each of the new prison's 1,500 inmates would have four square meters, as against the Russian average of 1.2 square meters.In a report to the State Duma, Abramkin's group charged the Interior Ministry with allowing "the harshest and most humiliating violations of human dignity in detention centers." The new prison will house prisoners awaiting trial, who are routinely jailed under a practice Abramkin said was a problem in itself in the absence of a system of bail. Remand prisoners have been kept in jail for up to six years, he said.