New paddy wagons guarantee punishment with comfort

But will this make it easier for those who will be forced to transfer to this specific “transport”?

Victoria Pavlova

It is important for everyone to know what a modern Russian paddy wagon is. Special vehicles for the transportation of detainees for administrative offenses are already becoming almost the people's "public transport". On February 24 alone, more than 1,500 people were detained at protests against the special operation, of which 600 were in Moscow. On March 6, 750 people were detained in St. Petersburg during an uncoordinated rally. Earlier, there were even more massive detentions - according to OVD-Info (recognized as a foreign agent), on January 23, 2021, the number of detainees in Moscow exceeded 3,300 people. You can’t take such crowds of people by the handle to the nearest police station - you have to take them.

But now Muscovites and guests of the capital are promised that a free trip in a paddy wagon will take place in comfortable conditions. The Commissioner for Human Rights in Moscow, Tatyana Potyaeva, announced the appearance of new paddy wagons with air conditioning and toilets. What modern paddy wagons are like, and whether this initiative will help solve the problem of respect for human rights, Novye Izvestia dealt with GOSTs and human rights activists.

The trip will be long

The problem of transporting detainees is more relevant than ever. According to Andrey Babushkin, chairman of the HRC commission for the development of the penitentiary system, over the past 20 years the number of detainees and arrests in Moscow has increased by more than 2.5 times. People regularly complain about the conditions of detention. For example, activists detained in Moscow in November 2020 for picketing against domestic violence were kept in a cold paddy wagon all night, and those detained in Moscow after an unapproved rally on March 6, 2022 were kept in a paddy wagon for 4 hours.

From the point of view of the law, there is nothing to complain about: the Code of Administrative Offenses does not limit the term for the delivery of detainees. It simply states that "delivery must be made as soon as possible." Perhaps this period will be short, and perhaps not very much. It depends on many factors, says Piotr Kuryanov, Expert of the Fund for the Protection of Prisoners' Rights:

- As long as there is a need to keep, so much is kept. If you get stuck in a traffic jam, you can stand there for several hours. There are no regulations. Of course, people are stuffed into these paddy wagons in large numbers and deliberately kept in them.

Paddy wagon strife

To be ready for the journey, at least mentally, you need to understand what kind of paddy wagon you will be traveling on. They are different, their arrangement is regulated by different GOSTs. The differences are explained by Eva Merkacheva, a member of the Council under the President of the Russian Federation for the development of civil society and human rights:

- Paddy wagons for the transportation of administrative detainees are paddy wagons of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and paddy wagons for transporting those who are transported are paddy wagons of the FSIN system. But the escort, the transportation of prisoners from the pre-trial detention center to the courts - this is also handled by the system of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. As for the standards of transportation, especially for long distances, such paddy wagons must necessarily contain not only ventilation, but also a toilet.

Not a hotel on wheels, of course, but at least some requirements for basic amenities. So Tatyana Potyaeva was talking about the paddy wagons, which deliver the prisoners. “The Ombudswoman spoke about the special transport, which is in charge of the escort regiment and which is designed to transport those arrested on criminal cases to move them between isolation wards and courts. Such paddy wagons were developed three years ago and have already been put into mass production”, - confirms Andrey Babushkin.

These paddy wagons are built in accordance with GOST 33546, which came into force on April 1, 2017. So mandatory toilets for prisoners are not new. Quite another thing is paddy wagons for administratively detained persons. GOST 34685 “Operational vehicles for the transportation of persons detained under administrative procedure” for special vehicles that are driven to the places of illegal rallies and other actions was created only in 2020, and entered into force on July 1, 2021. And the conditions of detention in the new “GOST” auto-orders themselves are similar to punishment.

This GOST provides for hard seats on a metal frame, barred tinted windows no larger than 30x50 cm in size, located right under the ceiling, and heating with ventilation. That's all comfort. There is no talk of any toilets with air conditioners in GOST. Maintaining the microclimate is at the mercy of another GOST 30593, but it regulates only the minimum heating temperature, and the installation of an air conditioner is a voluntary wish of the customer. In GOST for "administrative" paddy wagons, much more attention is paid to bars and locks on the doors so that no one escapes than to creating conditions acceptable to a person.

Preparation of additional "torture"?

But it is clear what the detainees can expect. It is worth, for example, to remember that the mere presence of a toilet does not mean the ability to use it. Pyotr Kuryanov believes that such “rides” in paddy wagons are already part of the punishment for people:

- Most often they carry in ordinary paddy wagons, where there are no toilets or air conditioners. Even if some models with toilets are provided, in most cases they are simply not allowed to use. This is the practice of application, this is the impact on administrative detainees.

A similar point of view is shared by Yeva Merkacheva:

- It is absolutely wild to hear when administrative detainees were kept in paddy wagons for many hours - this is already part of the punishment for a person who has not yet been protocoled! And then they drove in these paddy wagons on the territory of the police departments and stood there. Living people, and they were treated like some kind of cargo, were tortured in this way.

It's time to remember Solzhenitsyn, who, in his book The Gulag Archipelago, described the interior of wagons.

“...The windows on the corridor side are ordinary, but with the same slanting bars from the outside. And in the prisoner's compartment there is no window - only a small, also doomed, mole rat at the level of the second shelves (here, without windows, it seems to us that the car is like luggage). The door to the compartment is sliding: an iron frame, also lathed. All together from the corridor it is very reminiscent of a menagerie: behind a solid lattice, on the floor and on the shelves, some pitiful human-like creatures are hunched over and look plaintively at you, asking you to drink and eat. But in the menagerie animals are never so crowded”

Yeva Merkacheva recalls that the European Court of Human Rights has already recognized Russian paddy wagons as an instrument of torture:

- Three years ago, the ECHR recognized transportation in paddy wagons as torture, people complained massively: that it was stuffy, that there was not enough space, that sick and healthy people were transported together, that they smoke in paddy wagons, so everyone was suffocating, complained that there was no toilet, no conditioner. The ECHR granted the complaint, and after that the Ministry of Justice made changes to the standards. Now there is data about illumination, the number of square meters per person. But in order to check whether these standards are observed, members of the PMC (Public Monitoring Commission) with equipment should be allowed into the paddy wagons. But no one lets us in, paddy wagons are not the place of detention, which we, human rights activists, have the right to check. Lately, many have told us that there were toilets in paddy wagons (this year), but none of the escorts opened them.

The paradox of the domestic paddy wagon: on the one hand, the toilet seems to be there, but it seems to be not. Although the first paddy wagons with dry closets were purchased for the Metropolitan Police back in 2014. There is no way to check the functionality of the toilets until you take a ride yourself. And this is not all the "charms" of modern paddy wagons - adds Yeva Merkacheva:

- The main problem of paddy wagons is that they are hot in summer and people freeze in them in winter. And as soon as one person smokes, the whole paddy wagon suffocates. Even in paddy wagons there are so-called "glasses" - like separate cameras. Prisoners, who are slightly above average height and weight, say that it is impossible to sit there, your knees rest against the door, your head rests against the ceiling, and in this you are riding like in a coffin. People are put there (it is believed that for security purposes), when, for example, a former employee (BS-nickname) is transported along with prisoners. Or, for example, they transport men and take one woman - so they put her in this “glass”. But being in the "glass" is just torture. A man rides in a coffin in a standing position. And women from the women's SIZO-6 write that before they get to court, they are taken along the road and brought to one, to another, to a third, and all this lasts for hours. In total, they can spend more than 7-8 hours in a paddy wagon. And then they are taken to the Moscow City Court and from there they are taken to their SIZO-6, that is, it is a painful long road.

Trucks are also a business

This whole situation with the increase in the comfort of paddy wagons, which was announced by the human rights activist Potyaeva, Pyotr Kuryanov considers absurd:

- This is some kind of dubious stuffing, mocking in fact. Potyaeva is the first source of such information, and this is a kind of mockery - she, the Commissioner for Human Rights, reported about paddy wagons! In theory, the prerogative to report this is with the press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Penitentiary Service, or the manufacturer of such vehicles. In the context of an increase in the number of detainees, arrests, a wave of fabricated criminal cases, such news appears that, it turns out, they will be transported in human conditions, that is, sit down - I don’t want to!

But now the security forces and regional authorities will have a reason to update the fleet of paddy wagons to meet the new standards. And this is not a cheap pleasure. For example, in October 2020, the Moscow TsODD announced the purchase of paddy wagons for the Ministry of Internal Affairs for 491 million rubles . For 191 million rubles, 35 cars were bought from ST Nizhegorodets for 20 detainees (5.46 million rubles each for a paddy wagon), for 190.8 million they also bought 35 cars for 15 detainees (also about 5.46 million rubles per car) and 30 paddy wagons for 6 detainees for 109 million rubles (3.63 million per car). It turns out very small paddy wagons, because the landing in them is more than close: the AVTOSAK bus from the Lukaz company, based on the regular suburban bus NEFAZ 5299, accommodates 70 detainees, and popular models based on Kamaz trucks - from 22 to 36 people depending on modification.

Also in 2020, the Russian Guard, which specializes in uncoordinated actions and rallies, purchased 29 paddy wagons at 6.3 million rubles each . The contract without a competition was given to Aliya Chechenov 's "Combine of Automobile Vans". And the largest contract in recent years was signed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 2018 - then the department purchased 392 paddy wagons for almost 1.3 billion rubles for Balashikha, St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk and Khabarovsk at a price of 2.7 to 5.6 million rubles. The purchase was also made from a single unnamed supplier.

Following Moscow, a large-scale renewal of the fleet of paddy wagons may follow in other regions.

As of 2019, there were about 2,800 paddy wagons in Russia, of which 185 were located in Moscow. Yekaterinburg is not far behind - 175 paddy wagons. Given the tendency of the inhabitants of Yekaterinburg to defend their position (as is the case with the construction of a temple in the park), new paddy wagons may come in handy. And the top three is closed by the Krasnoyarsk Territory, prone to environmental protests - 74 paddy wagons. The fourth and fifth places in terms of the number of paddy wagons are occupied by the Perm Territory (68 pieces) and the Rostov Region (74 pieces).

In which region they will follow Potyaeva's testament and begin to massively renew the fleet of paddy wagons - it will be seen from the purchases. But not all of them appear in the public domain. If paddy wagons are purchased by the Traffic Organization Center, as in Moscow, or simply by the regional administration, as in Rostov-on-Don, the information can be viewed. Procurements of the civil department are in the public domain. But the contracts of the security forces can be classified. But we continue to keep our finger on the pulse and follow the novelties of the “paddy wagon fleet” and the cost of them.