On 19 February, a press conference called ‘The Penal Enforcement Code of Russia: Are Changes Possible?’ took place in Moscow.

The participants spoke of the current need to reform the criminal and penal enforcement legislation of Russia. Professor of the Faculty of Law, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Vyacheslav Seliverstov, Director of the Department for Protection of Human Rights in Criminal Court Proceedings, the Office of the Russian Federation High Commissioner for Human Rights, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee for Security and Anti-Corruption, Alexander Khinshtein, and a representative of the Volnoe Delo, Oleg Deripaska Foundation, Peter Posmakov were the speakers of the press conference.

For the 19 years of its existence the Penal Enforcement Code has undergone many changes — namely 588 amendments — which have had effect on the document’s integrity. Vyacheslav Seliverstov pointed out that a whole number of articles fail to correspond to each other.

Valery Bazunov underscored that quite a number of article of the Code make it impossible to efficiently protect rights of prisoners.

The need to elaborate a new penal enforcement code of the Russian Federation, which would have a more detailed mechanism of protection of human rights in penitentiaries, is evident today, the expert said.

An initiative group for development of the scientific and theoretic model of a new penal enforcement code has been created by now. The group includes scholars of some most prominent universities and academies of Russia, staff members of the High Commissioner’s Office and other organisations. Highly experienced experts of the human rights and academic communities, judiciary, prosecutor’s office and the penitentiary system are to participate in discussions of some of the provisions and the model in general.

The initiative related to the reformation of the Code has been supported by the Volnoe Delo Foundation, a grant receiver that contributed to the realisation of the socially important project.