MOSCOW, October 2 (RAPSI) – A trend towards lower numbers of minors, women with children, pregnant women among convicts within Russia’s penitentiary system has been registered in recent years, Children Rights Commissioner Anna Kuznetsova has said during her visit to a pretrial detention center in Moscow.

The Children Ombudsman has inspected the conditions of detention of minors and pregnant women.

Detained women need to be provided with full information as to their children’ further lives: what documents they will need and how the respective paperwork is to be completed in order they could be temporary put in care of their relatives, Kuznetsova has noted. As to children, who committed crimes, the focus here is to be on the attitude development component, socialization of such children, so they would never again be returned to penitentiary establishments, she has stressed.

Over the last five years, the Children Ombudsman observed, the number of children under the age of three, who stayed with their mothers in detention declined by 35.5%, whereas the total number of minors in penitentiary facilities decreased by 33.1%; as to pregnant women, the respective figure was down by 38.2%.