An image from inside the Belorechensk youth colony. Source: Youtube. Right now, 17 prison officers are on trial in the southern Russian regions of Krasnodar and Kalmykia — they’re accused of meting out severe beatings to their charges, two of whom died as a result of their injuries. According to the prosecution, the guards at two correctional facilities used torture to force inmates into submission and carry out their orders. But were these just isolated cases, or do they form part of a deliberate policy inside Russia’s prison service?
On an individual basis
In November 2015, according to police investigators, a duty officer in the Belorechensk juvenile correction colony in Kuban, a region in the North Caucasus, broke official regulations by allowing security guards and plain clothes investigators onto the colony site. The two teams had different aims in mind: the security team were to beat up and intimidate newly arrived underage offenders, in order to break their morale, while the investigators planned to conduct “individual chats” with them.
This “special operation” even involved a “mentor”, a member of the facility’s educational work department who, like his colleagues, in the interests of secrecy and more effective intimidation, donned a balaclava before “chatting” to his charges.
