Duma proposes to use prison labor for 2018 FIFA World Cup preparations

A Russian parliament member has prepared at a bill that would allow for the employment of federal prisoners at construction sites for the next FIFA World Cup, to be held in Russia in 2018.

Alexander Khinstein, Deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Security, has proposed the bill as a set of amendments to the Russian criminal code, which would allow for the employment of prisoners at regional enterprises located far away from federal prisons. The bill would make it possible for any legal entity to employ prisoners. At the moment, Russian law allows for prisoners to work only within their penal colonies.

In order for the prisoners to remain incarcerated at the place of their employment, Khinstein calls for another amendment allowing the “formation of isolated zones which function as penal colony settlements outside the correctional facility, allowing for the labor adaptation of convicts.”

The heads of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia support the proposals, yet Federal Penitentiary Service deputy director Analoliy Rudyi says that the correctional facility and the construction site employing prisoners must be located within the same region of Russia. “We are not looking at the possibility of shuttling in prisoners from all over the country,” he said.

The new norm applies to prisoners who are serving terms in penal colony settlements and to those who have been convicted to compulsory correctional labor. According to the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia, there are 39,414 people incarcerated in 128 in penal colony settlements in 2015.

Prisons were a major source of labor in the Soviet Union from the 1930s to the 1950s. Prisoners participated in the construction of almost all large-scale industrial and transportation sites built in that period.

The newspaper Kommersant notes that prison labor is used by private and public enterprises in the USA, Germany, and France, among other countries.

In Russia, the daily revenue of prisoners in penal colony settlements does not exceed 218 rubles ($4.38), and thus the monthly earnings of prisoners are below minimum wage.