What is Brittney Griner accused of and how long could she be in the Russian Penal Colony?
The basketball player was jailed in August and an appeal from her lawyers was denied on Tuesday. She faces nine years behind bars in Russia.
Brittney Griner, US basketball star, is looking at nine-and-a-half years in a Russian penal colony after the appeal against her sentence was denied . The double Olympic winner apologised for her “honest mistake” but the presiding judge described the sentence as “fair.”
Griner’s lawyer, Alexander Boykov, told the court, “No judge, hand on heart, will honestly say that Griner’s nine-year sentence is in line with Russian criminal law.”
Griner was convicted in a Russian court on drug charges after medical marijuana was found in her suitcase while travelling through Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport in February. It has been argued that the timing of the arrest has led to her case being made an example of as Ruso-American relations are at their lowest in 60 years due to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Could she be sent to a penal colony?
Vice reported in August that Griner is looking at the majority of her jail time in one of Russia’s penal colonies. Ex-prisoners recall 16-hour days working in sewing shops on broken machines with next-to-no hygiene and constant monitoring. People convicted on drug charges are likely to be sent here.
“There were not enough human rights defenders to go around before already,” Russian prison sociologist Olga Zeveleva told VICE News, “But if we look at the situation today, with a completely destroyed civil society and activist space in Russia against the backdrop of [President Vladimir] Putin’s repression, there’s not a lot of hope that human rights activists will come and help someone.”
Griner’s situation as a high-profile American prisoner may offer her some protection as the US government can be hoped to look after her. Nonetheless, being in this situation for such a minor charge would be distressing.
“Russia has one of the most abhorrent prison systems in the world, [which] definitely affects the negotiation process,” Zeveleva said.
How do the Russian and US prison systems compare?
The work system of the Russian penal colonies are not dissimilar to US prisons in which two-thirds of prisoners work during their time. Some are paid as little as $450 a year to do maintenance work that is crucial for the prisons to keep operating. Researchers were told that 75 percent of US prison labourers were subject to solitary confinement or denial of family visits if they refused to carry out the labour.
Russia’s prison population has been on a steady decline since the turn of the millenium. Data from World Prison Brief and Birkbeck University says the prison population in 2020 was 523,928, half that of two decades prior. A rate of 363 inmates per 100,000 people is half that of the US prison population of 642 per 100,000 while also having more than 2.1 million people in jail across the whole country, the highest number in the world.