Russian prisons and colonies are experiencing a wedding boom
There is a wedding boom in places of detention. Although the Federal Penitentiary Service does not keep general statistics on the number of marriages concluded in prisons and colonies, reports from the field that we have analyzed indicate that over the past year and a half, prisoners have begun to marry one and a half to two times more often. A noticeable increase in activity is also observed on specialized Internet resources, where any potential bride can meet the prisoner and, after a short correspondence, become his official wife. However, the topic of weddings in colonies is still shrouded in a kind of aura of mystery, and neither officials, nor human rights activists, nor the media like to talk about it. How and why do weddings happen behind barbed wire? What are the reasons for the increase in the number of marriages in prison? The Our Version correspondent decided to find answers to these and other questions.
...Natasha had been dating Roman for about three months, and she liked this desperate, reckless guy. He easily squandered money, gave her expensive, although sometimes rather ridiculous, gifts, and generally lived his life to the fullest. She did not ask questions regarding his occupation, but she already began to guess something. That is why the news of his arrest for banditry was not particularly shocking. She was called to court as a witness. It turns out that he took donated jewelry from people during robberies, when, together with his friends, he “gutted” buses with shuttles.
She received the first news from him two years later, when, having gone through all the hassle with the trial and the “voluntary release” of material evidence, she had almost forgotten her former boyfriend. In a letter that he sent through one of his friends, Roman swore his love and said that she was special and the only one for him. And he asked for help if possible with cigarettes, tea, sugar and warm clothes.
On average, in a colony with a “population” of 1.5–2 thousand people, 25–30 marriages are registered per year. In total, in Russia there are currently 7 prisons, 657 correctional colonies, in which more than 860 thousand people are imprisoned, of which approximately 50 thousand are women. So the total number of marriages behind bars can be considered approximately equal to more than 12 thousand per year.
She, of course, sent him the parcel. And then another one. And further. And she agreed to come for a “short-term” date to a colony near Vladimir. She had never heard such words about love from any of her suitors. And so she immediately, without hesitation, said “yes” when he asked her to sign with him. Moreover, without registering their marriage, they would not have been allowed a “long” visit, for three days, which a maximum security prisoner is entitled to once every six months. She had already decided for herself that she would wait for him all the long eight years that he received as a result of the court verdict...
From the point of view of the Criminal Executive Code, there are no obstacles to registering a marriage by a person in prison. Unless he violates discipline and has no penalties.
Usually the bride is responsible for the legal formalization of the marriage. She takes a special form from the registry office, fills it out, and then passes this form to the colony. There, the prisoner’s signature is certified either by management or by a specially invited notary who has access to the colony. His services, of course, cost money. Yes, the bride also needs to receive, by proxy, from the groom his passport in the special unit of the colony and there - a certificate stating that he is serving his sentence. Then the bride pays the state fee and takes the documents to the registry office, where the registration date is set. All details of the “event” are agreed upon with the leadership of the colony.
Which? Well, for example, a church wedding. It can take place simultaneously with registration, or maybe on some other day after it. According to the existing situation in the Russian Orthodox Church, only people with a registered “secular” marriage can get married. Almost all colonies in Russia today have either their own or a “patronage” church, the clergy from which are allowed into the territory of the colony almost without hindrance.
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...The wedding idea seemed stupid to Natasha. She didn’t go to church, and she didn’t want to listen to some incomprehensible texts and chants for a couple of hours. Moreover, the cost of inviting a priest to the colony for a wedding, announced by his loved one, was also very confusing - 10 thousand rubles. This money had to be paid to the local temple as a charitable contribution. And money was already bad. After all, it was still necessary to sew a dress and collect food for a “long”, three-day date, which was supposed to be immediately after registering the marriage.
The ceremony itself turned out to be quite boring and short. At first, she languished for about 40 minutes in something like the “red corner” of the colony - a room, as they explained to her, for especially solemn events. What do they have here, they often get married - she wondered? What else is considered “solemn” here? An employee invited from the local registry office openly toiled with her, looking impatiently at his watch. The luxurious bouquet she brought, the most beautiful one that could be collected in a local store, was shaken up one flower at a time before the ceremony, which greatly disturbed its composition. “What if you want to smuggle drugs there?” – the “senior” on duty muttered to her. And the light beige dress, specially made for such an event, already looked ridiculous among this environment.
Finally they brought Roman. Natasha somehow felt a painful pang when, with his hands behind his back, he introduced himself to the “citizen chief” in a familiar patter, apparently: “Prisoner Roman... convicted under Articles 161, 162 of the Criminal Code, came to register the marriage.”
“Well, sign, or something,” the registry office worker perked up, handing them some papers. And he was stopped by the head of the colony, who seemed delighted at the opportunity to speak. At least all his parting words about a happy family life, overcoming difficulties, love and harmony were as banal as they were pompous. Natasha could hardly wait for the end of this speech so as not to interrupt it with an irritated question about where to sign.
She and Roman signed several papers. The registry office employee took their passports with him, telling her that after the date she should go pick him up at the local registry office herself. He was also given Roman's passport, which was kept in the colony.
There were cases, as she was told later, that prisoners were taken to get married directly to the registry office, and there, of course, everything was much more beautiful. But for this it was necessary to “donate” a fair amount to the colony or to have good administrative resources in it.
The bags she brought for the date were also shaken up and several items, dishes, forks and knives were not missing. “You will have everything there,” said the colony employee. He turned out to be a good guy! He said that for 2 thousand rubles he was ready to bring champagne to their room and then take the bottle away. And the visiting room itself cost the same as a good hotel - 1.5 thousand rubles per day. Three days of their “honeymoon,” as Roman laughed, flew by unnoticed. And just three weeks after her already seemingly absurd marriage, Natasha realized that she was pregnant.
“Do you have any girlfriends who want to meet a nice guy?” – Roman asked questions several times in letters. To Natasha, these proposals - to get to know the prisoner - seemed completely nonsense. Which normal girl would agree to this? But then she found out on one of the Internet forums where wives of prisoners like her communicated that there was even a special dating site for prisoners.
This site was created two years ago in order, according to its organizers, “to help the social rehabilitation of prisoners and the realization of their right to communicate.” True, prisoners are not officially allowed access to the Internet, and mobile devices from which you can also access the Internet are classified as “prohibited.” Many prisoners who are registered there have prison terms of 8–11 years, or even more.
Here are phrases from profiles on a prisoner dating site: “I want to find my soul mate who would understand and accept me with an open heart”; “I can only wish one thing for my future wife – patience”; “I am looking for a woman aged 30 and older, who knows the value of happiness and human relationships, devoted, intelligent and financially independent, who dreams of the warmth and comfort of a full family and home” (written by a prisoner with a 24-year sentence); “I hope that a Sweet, Kind, Earthly woman (25–55 years old) will answer me, with whom I can get rid of the past and create a beautiful, interesting, happy life for both of us. Appearance doesn’t matter, as long as you have a beautiful soul.” The last message is from a person sentenced to life imprisonment.
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Girls' "free" profiles are not very diverse. Almost all of them, although they belong to people aged 30 and older, are similar to snotty women’s profiles from ordinary dating sites. And the goal of most of them is simply to attract male attention, which their authors seem to be deprived of in life. Although such acquaintances sometimes lead to very sad consequences: when a released prisoner drunkenly kills a recent “absentee.” This story happened last October in St. Petersburg. The girl met the prisoner by correspondence and decided to help him return to a normal life after his release. However, then she became disappointed in her unlucky chosen one and tried to kick him out. In retaliation, he maimed her and her elderly parents. It happens that a prisoner poisons the life of a stupid “absentee student” even from a colony, threatening over the phone to kill her and her entire family if she does not follow his orders. There are also enough such cases.
But practically nothing is known about weddings in women’s zones. And this, I think, is not only because the conditions there are much stricter, and there is a big problem with mobile phones and the Internet. It’s just that the degree of self-sacrifice of Russian men, alas, in the general mass is such that a natural phenomenon for the women’s zone and pre-trial detention centers is not weddings, but divorces. The average period of patience of a prisoner's husband does not extend beyond four to six months. And then the prisoner either receives a message by mail: “Darling, I met someone else,” or her remaining relatives or friends inform her about this. Or even the lawyer brings a divorce notice. Moreover, according to the existing provisions, it is possible to divorce a person convicted for a term of more than three years without any problems or court hearings.
Human rights activist Larisa Fefilova, chairman of the Udmurt regional branch of the All-Russian public movement “For Human Rights”*, tells Our Version that in their republic there is another problem regarding the family status of prisoners. Spouses who have lived in a civil marriage for many years and even have children are not allowed visits without registering the marriage. “That is, it turns out that a person is forcibly forced into marriage. What if people have other ideas about this? In a small town, for example, it is not at all prestigious to have a prisoner as your legal spouse, and this is not the best for a child. It turns out that the administration of the zone where her common-law husband is being held, by such coercion to legally register a marriage, violates, first of all, the rights of a woman.”
As we have already said, the FSIN does not keep statistics on marriages in zones. Just like in the registry office, they told us that they do not make a distinction between registering marriages in the usual way and in places of deprivation of liberty. But after calling a number of colonies, we managed to obtain some data. However, according to some prison leaders, last year there was a real boom in prison weddings. Thus, in the "ten" - maximum security colony No. 10 in the Perm region, where 2,300 prisoners are kept - more than 100 marriages took place last year, which significantly exceeds the data for the same period in 2008. Deputy head of IK-10 of the GUFSIN of Russia for the Perm Territory, Ilya Aslamov, believes that the desire of a married man to return home is much higher than that of a bachelor: “He tries not to violate the regime of detention, knowing that his loved one is waiting for him in freedom. From the point of view of educational work, this is very important.”
It is obvious that the inexorable penetration of high technology even into life behind the thorns also contributes to the increase in the number of marriages. Today, from almost all colonies you can legally and inexpensively access the Internet, which greatly simplifies the procedure of correspondence and dating.
When you study the profiles of prisoners who want to meet, you immediately pay attention to one characteristic point. Most of them are looking for "financially independent" women, and this seems to explain the true purpose of many prison marriages. They are banal: prisoners view their newly-made wives as a tool to make their prison life easier. After all, a prisoner expects from his wife not only romantic letters, but also ordinary food parcels, money and long dates.
“Prison is such a stressful situation for a person that as a result of entering prison, he moves into a completely distorted reality,” gallery owner Tatyana Preobrazhenskaya, who served several years in a colony, tells Our Version. “In this reality, only speedy release and improvement of conditions of imprisonment matter. It is through this prism that all new acquaintances are considered - whether they can become useful for completing these tasks. A person in prison often ceases to be a person, he is capable of any meanness, and the laws of morality are invalid here. Only freedom is important. The neighbor is perceived only as a tool to achieve one’s goals or as a hindrance. Therefore, to talk about any “love” of a prisoner, and even one that broke out over correspondence or the Internet, is at the very least stupid and naive.”
...Natasha’s parents helped her with the child. Having learned about the pregnancy, they forgave their “unlucky” daughter. The boy was born surprisingly similar to Roman. And he had to wait until parole - conditional early release - for about six months. The cassation court “cut off” a year from Roman’s sentence, and he was in good standing with the colony’s leadership, so the prospect of being released early was very real. Therefore, Roman’s last letter came as a bolt from the blue for her. He wrote that friends on the outside told him how Natasha was “playing around” while he was in prison, and that the child was most likely not his. And he is going to demand a divorce from her right from here, from the colony.
As they later explained to her, this was a very smart move by Roman.
In freedom, the court would hardly have reacted so calmly to his decision to leave his wife with a young child. And cases of infidelity of prisoner's wives to local courts in the area where the colony is located are well known, and they meet the prisoners halfway, without even awarding alimony to the mother. And so it happened. By the time her “beloved” was released, Natasha found herself a single mother. Grandmother's apartment had to be rented out, and Natasha moved back to her parents. And Roman, whose phone number she had difficulty begging from a mutual friend, only muttered contemptuously into the phone: “Do you know what they called such fools in our zone? "Meat". Slut is free. And don’t you dare call me anymore, and I don’t need your little puppy. You had to think about what you were doing when you contacted a prisoner.” * The Russian human rights public political movement “For Human Rights” was included by the Ministry of Justice in the list of NPOs performing the functions of a foreign agent
WHEN THE CHURCH IS MULTIFUNCTIONAL
Registering a marriage in prison costs slightly more than usual. As a rule, the woman pays, and she is also responsible for preparing documents, etc. To enter into a marriage, the mutual consent of the bride and groom is required. At the registry office, the bride fills out her part of the application with the presentation of the necessary documents. After the application is certified by the registry office, it takes the document to the administrative department of the prison. The groom, confirming his consent, personally fills out the second part of the application form. Permission to register a marriage is given by the prison administration. In this case, the behavior of the prisoner is taken into account, what article the person is under. Marriage cannot be prohibited, but this procedure can be reduced to a legal minimum.
In “White Swan” there is a church built back in 1863. During Soviet times, it was not used for its intended purpose - cameras were placed on its area. In 1998, the original appearance of the temple was restored. Today the church is multifunctional - there is a possibility of weddings for representatives of the main seven religious denominations of Latvia. Chaplains also conduct psychological conversations with prisoners there.
