Yury Schmidt comments on the proposal by Pavel Krashennikov, chairman of the Duma legislation committee, to amend the way in which time spent in pre-trial detention is deducted from a prison sentence

Yury Schmidt speaks to the website publication Izbrannoye

Pavel Krashennikov’s proposal has still to become law but in any case it should be welcomed. To those of us outside prison there seems little difference between pre-trial detention, the penal colony or the punishment block. Those behind prison walls know how they differ all too well.

Being held in the pre-trial detention centre is a far harsher experience than the penal colony. Prisoners in the latter see the sky not only during one hour’s exercise: not to mention the personal visits that are excluded in the detention centre. For instance, Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s wife, children or parents could come and visit him in the Krasnokamensk penal colony. In Chita my client is deprived of that possibility.

We should welcome the proposed new changes not just because they might be applied to Mikhail Khodorkovsky but because they could also affect ten of thousands of other people.