According to reports, US basketball player Brittney Griner has been sentenced to nine years in prison for illicit narcotics possession and has been sent in a secluded Russian correctional colony south-east of Moscow.
She joins the tens of thousands of Russian women who are already incarcerated, and no one knows how long time she will spend there because the US wants to set up a prisoner swap to free her.
Her life in a Russian prison will undoubtedly not be simple until that time, and she will probably have to deal with similar circumstances to any other prisoner.
It’s reported that, early in November, after Griner’s appeal against her drug conviction was denied, she was transferred from a prison facility in Moscow to a penitentiary colony.
But it is only now that we have an idea where she is. A source has told Reuters news agency she is being held at a women’s penal colony in the remote village of Yavas in Mordovia, 500km (310 miles) south-east of the capital.
The phrase penal colony revives memories of the deadly Gulag of the Soviet era, but in this case it simply refers to a prison – with several rows of low-rise buildings housing communal barracks for inmates and separate structures housing workshops for inmates.
For days no-one, including her lawyers, knew where Griner had been sent. For Russia this is normal, and when inmates’ families cannot afford a good lawyer it can sometimes take weeks for a letter to arrive from the jail
BBC News reported that, her jail is one of Russia’s regular prison colonies, where most of 453,000 inmates are held.
Repeat offenders or those with sentences for grave crimes are sent to strict-regime or special-regime colonies.
The difference lies in the number of visits allowed by relatives, the frequency of permitted parcels with food or clothing and the severity of punishments for breaking regulations.
Her jail is one of Russia’s regular prison colonies, where most of 453,000 inmates are held.
Repeat offenders or those with sentences for grave crimes are sent to strict-regime or special-regime colonies.
The difference lies in the number of visits allowed by relatives, the frequency of permitted parcels with food or clothing and the severity of punishments for breaking regulations.
Grave crimes are punishable with time in cells and no access to open air at all. On the other end of the penitentiary scale are “colonies-settlements” for those committing lesser crimes. Those are more relaxed and even allow days away from the barracks.
Women make up around 5% of Russia’s prison population, so there are far fewer correctional facilities for women which means relatives who want to visit have to travel further.
Griner’s conviction will be of no surprise to anyone there: 13.5% of all sentences in 2021 were handed down for possession, smuggling or dealing illicit drugs. For women that number rises to 42%, although not all were custodial.
Russian police have for years been accused of beefing up crime statistics by planting drugs or pressuring detainees into confessions. This was not Griner’s case: she admitted to having vape cartridges with cannabis oil in her baggage on her return to Russia in February to play club basketball during the US off-season.
She may be a women’s NBA champion and Olympic gold medallist, but she does not speak Russian and there are no correctional facilities for foreigners. There are, however, 20 prisons that house various law enforcement employees who break the law, so they don’t mix potentially with the criminals they helped put away.
For male prisoners, violence is an ever-present threat, either from other inmates or staff. Video recordings of torture, rape and humiliation emerged last year, providing hard evidence of an organised system of intimidation, extortion and extracting confessions, carried out by inmates egged on by prison authorities.
That kind of violence does not take place in women’s prisons, but Olga Podoplelova of the NGO “Russia behind Bars” says life for inmates is not easy: “There’s no established informal jail hierarchy in women’s jails, but administration controls everything and there’s plenty of ways of turning an inmate’s life into hell.”
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