If a few years ago audio communication and e-mail were the main services for prisoners, now services for electronic transfer of photos and electronic recording of appointments are actively developing. For their projects, IT companies buy out sonorous prison domains – sizo, fsin, v-sizo. Judging by the amount of revenue, the high-tech business in the colonies is profitable. Human rights activists and lawyers are only happy about digitalization, but complain about high tariffs.
According to the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia, at the beginning of 2023, there were 900 institutions of the penitentiary system (CIS) operating in the country: colonies of different regimes, colonies-settlements, educational colonies for minors and hundreds of pre-trial detention centers. At the beginning of the year, they contained more than 433 thousand prisoners and prisoners.
This closed market has always been of interest to businesses, including high-tech ones. For the first time, digital services for the institutions of the Federal Penitentiary Service began to develop in 2008. The pioneer was the company “Special Electronic Systems” (SES), at the origins of which was the legendary head of the St. Petersburg “Crosses” Alexander Zhitenev, who retired in 2007.
The development of SES began with the “Crosses” – the organization developed a service for sending electronic messages for prisoners and their relatives.
Today, according to information on the Special Electronic Systems website, the company, in addition to electronic correspondence, provides a number of other electronic services: money transfers for prisoners, an emergency alert system for personnel, video communication between special contingent and relatives, and others. According to the Kontur.Focus service, the organization’s total revenue exceeds 200 million rubles, demonstrating a slight increase compared to last year.
After SES, a Tula telecommunications provider entered the market of penitentiary institutions, creating a product under the Zonatelecom brand. The operator of “Zonatelecom” is the Tula LLC “Protected Telecommunications”. The company was founded in 2020, and over the three years of its existence, it has increased its revenue from 250 million to 1.5 billion rubles.
The firm provides services of audio and video conversations with prisoners, electronic correspondence, money transfers and press delivery to the colonies. Apparently, Zonatelecom is not going to stop at this. According to the domain name registrar Ru-Center, in March 2023, the v-sizo domain was registered for the company, which hosts a service for making appointments for short-term dates and sending parcels in pre-trial detention centers and colonies in Russia. Some penitentiary institutions of the Khabarovsk and Altai territories, Magadan, Tomsk, Kirov and Penza regions, as well as the Republic of Tuva are already connected to it.
Moreover, in 2022, the Zonapokupok trademark was registered in the name of the owner of Zonatelecom, a service that is positioned as an online store that delivers groceries and essential goods to the colony.
According to IT companies entering the market of digital services for penitentiary institutions, there is no single monopoly in this area, just as there is no full coverage of colonies with digital services. According to the chairman of the Primorsky regional branch of the Council of Public Monitoring Commissions Vladimir Naidin, electronic services have not yet reached the Far East.
“There is video communication in some colonies, but I have never seen it used. I don’t think that digital services are one of the main problems in the colonies now, we have not received any complaints about this,” explains Vladimir Naidin.
Market players develop services in regions where they manage to find common ground with the regional GUFSIN. The interest of the colonies lies in the convenient solution of problems related to the socialization of prisoners.
At the same time, the colonies themselves in some cases do not bear any expenses. Under the terms of cooperation, IT companies provide them with digital equipment and service it free of charge. The business makes money from fees for audio, video calls and emails that are charged to prisoners and those who contact them.
– Our cooperation with the colonies is assessed as fruitful. In particular, I want to note the commonality of tasks with the leadership of the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Service employees are interested in telecom operators solving social problems. Thanks to this, a unique project was born for us, which was not there before – “Calls to Mom”. A minute of conversation with this contact is much cheaper than other calls,” says Marina Verkhovskaya, General Director of the Krasnoyarsk telecom company Ariadna.
According to her, over the past two years, the market for digital services for institutions of the penitentiary system has been developing rapidly.
– We have a mobile application “Ariadna” for Android. In addition, we have begun to modernize the equipment: convenient tablets are replacing video terminals in the institutions of the Federal Penitentiary Service, – explains the interlocutor of the publication. According to her, the company is currently combining its products into one ecosystem.
This market also attracts the attention of IT developers.
In 2021, the Complex Data Processing (COD) company appeared in Tula, which develops software products for penitentiary institutions and telecom operators. According to the Kontur.Focus service, she owns the sizo.ru and fsin.ru domains.
– This area is not easy – there are many restrictions associated with the fact that users of digital services are a special contingent. We saw that our solutions were in demand, and we began to work in this direction. As far as I know, large IT companies are also looking into this niche,” shares Sergey Kamaev, co-owner of KOD.
As experts in the field say in informal conversations, since the market is still developing, methods of unfair competition are often used there, in particular, black PR is used against competitors.
Public activists, human rights activists and lawyers interviewed by Oktagon generally positively assess the development of digital services in penitentiary institutions, but point to some problems. Control over the work of digital services needs to be strengthened, human rights activists say.
– In our opinion, such services should either be provided by the state or controlled by state-owned companies. After all, the special contingent is an extremely unprotected category, digital services can be used by third parties to pressure or spy on prisoners, – comments an expert in the field of criminal law, a former employee of the office of the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Russian Federation Valentin Bogdan.
“We should not forget that private services are interested in profit. As a result, only prisoners and their relatives suffer, as it often happens that the communication tariff for them is much higher than communication services in the wild.”
Valentin Bogdan | expert in criminal law
As human rights activists add, since the mechanism of state coercion is an institution that is provided exclusively by the state, it is logical that it should also be serviced by it.
Sources of the publication in the legal environment notice that digitalization is necessary for colonies not only in terms of establishing communication with relatives of prisoners, but also to facilitate the work of lawyers and investigators.
– For example, to get to a client, sometimes you have to sit for three hours waiting and not know whether they will take him out or not. Here an electronic service for visits would be useful. Services would also be in demand to simplify interaction with notaries: it is extremely difficult for a prisoner to invite a specialist or issue a power of attorney. And it often happens that relatives may urgently need to re-register something, sell it, and even restore the SIM card. All this stretches for a long time, one of the current Russian lawyers complains.
