Russia to test electronic tagging to ease prison numbers

0 Comments | AFP, January, 2007

MOSCOW (AFP) — Russia is to test electronic tagging of convicted criminals as a means of reducing its prison population, officials said.

"We want deprivation of freedom to be used as rarely as possible. People are degraded when they are imprisoned for a long time. We're looking for effective alternatives that could be widely used," a senior official with the federal sentencing board, Oleg Filimonov, told a prison reform conference organised with Swedish prison officials.

The European Union has allocated 500,000 million euros (650,000 dollars) over the coming three years for testing electronic tagging systems in open prisons in Russia, with a view to eventually tagging convicts who would otherwise be jailed, Filimonov told AFP.

Russia's jails have long been...