Brittney Griner.Photo: ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Brittney Griner isgetting sent to the harshest category of penal coloniesfor women, a so-called general regime prison, her lawyers tell PEOPLE.
Many women in Russia are sent to one of the 106 mixed gender low-security settlement penal colonies, but Griner’s conviction for drugs meansshe will be serving her nine-year sentencein one of the 35 high security correctional institutions for women only.
“It’s not an easy life in a settlement colony, but it’s a lot harsher in a general regime colony” Natalia Filimonovna, from the NGO Russia Behind Bars, tells PEOPLE.
Krivanek was sentenced to 16 months for causing “slight physical harm” to her roommate, but Griner’s felony charge, of bringing a vape pen with hash oil into the country, is considered a “grave” crime, punishable in the highest category prison.
The penal colony where Sarah Krivanek was held.Ryazan Novaya Gazeta
“We’re living in times when you get sent to a colony for the slightest possible reason, and so everyone feels that injustice keenly and unite together to support each other, whoever you are,” she tells PEOPLE.
Brittney Griner in Russian court on July 7.KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty
“The majority of inmates are in for drug offenses,” she goes on. “I’m not at all surprised Brittney got nine years; it’s not unusual. All I can do is feel for her.”
Krivanek told PEOPLEin a phone interview from her deportation cellthat “a drugs crime is seen as a crime against the nation, on a par with murder, and the sentence reflects that.” She also noted that inmates who disobeyed the rules in her colony were shipped off to a general regime colony as punishment.
Drawn-out transfers to a penal colony are a longtime practice in Russia. Yakovleva explains that Griner will now be kept in a central prison for convicts until a place is found for her in the overcrowded penitentiary system.
“It can take from two weeks to two months,” she says. Yakovleva, who now runs a charity to support female inmates with children, says she was “terrified” when she first got there. “You don’t know what’s ahead of you. It’s all grim and grey. They take away all your belongings and give you a uniform and a headscarf which who you have to wear all the time.”
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Inmates in the settlement colonies are permitted to wear their own clothes, keep their valuables and have money.
“It’s a horrifying experience. They take everything that belongs to you — that makes you a person — away from you. It’s run like a military boot camp.”
General regime prisons hold around 40,000 women. “The rules are much stricter there” says Ivan Melnikov of the International Committee for Human Rights. “Unlike the low security prisons, you are locked into your cells and are not permitted to walk around the territory freely or go beyond the prison walls for any reason.”
(L-R) Brianna Turner, Skylar Diggins-Smith, Kia Nurse and Brittney Griner.Ethan Miller/Getty
Galina says that women are grouped into “detachments” who share a room of up to 100 people sharing four sinks and four toilets. “You are woken at 5 a.m. and given twenty minutes to wash and dress. We worked as seamstresses from 7 a.m. to 6 a.m.”
Unlikethe low security prisons where an unlimited number of visitsand food packages are allowed, the high security prisons restrict this to 12 visits and 12 weight limited packages a year.
She adds that there was one volleyball court, but Brittney will be able to ask friends to send her a basketball hoop and can organize games in her leisure period. But she adds that “unlike the settlement colony, you are hardly permitted any time to yourself.”
“The worst thing about being in a general regime colony is being kept behind high walls ringed with barbed wire with look-out posts,” she says. “And you know you have to stay within that small, guarded space for what seems to you like forever.”
source: people.com
