Violence Reported on Rise in Soviet Jails, Labor Camps

Violence in Soviet prisons and labor camps is on the rise, and there have been three times as many instances of hostage-taking this year as in all of 1988, the country’s top corrections official said in an article published Friday.

Ivan Katorgin, head of the Interior Ministry’s Department of Correctional Facilities, said there was a 28.8% increase in crimes committed at correctional institutions and detention centers.

“This year, there were 48 cases of hostage-taking, which is three times more than the whole of 1988,” Katorgin wrote in Nedelya, a weekly supplement to the government newspaper Izvestia. “A total of 114 guards were subjected to physical violence, with 14 wounded and one killed.”

He said that over the first five months of 1989, 263 inmates faced disciplinary or criminal charges and that there was a growing tendency toward group disobedience and refusal to work.

The Interior Ministry is taking several steps to reverse the violent trend, such as allowing inmates to use 10% of their pay to buy food in prison shops and increasing the number of visits by relatives.

Katorgin also said corrupt prison officials will be fired.