FSIN spending has risen 40% during the war, despite a sharp drop in the number of prisoners

FSIN spending has risen 40% during the war, despite a sharp drop in the number of prisoners

Federal budget spending on the work of the FSIN has grown by 40% over the war years, even though the number of prisoners over roughly the same period fell by nearly 40%, «Vyorstka» has found.

If by the end of 2021 346.4 billion rubles had been spent from the budget on FSIN operations, then by the end of 2025 that amount had grown to 485.7 billion rubles, or by 40.2%, according to the draft law on budget execution.

At the same time, FSIN chief Arkady Gostev reported that at the end of 2021 there were 465,000 prisoners in the penal system (including suspects and defendants held in pretrial detention centers), while at present there are 282,000. That means the number of people held in FSIN institutions has fallen by 1.65 times.

At the beginning of March 2026, the number of prisoners was slightly higher, at 308,000. Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court Vladimir Davydov called this a “historic low.”

As Gostev stated, this decline was caused both by the “humanization of criminal punishments” (in his words, courts are increasingly handing down punishments not involving imprisonment) and by inmates signing contracts with the Defense Ministry. “Lately, work on recruiting contract soldiers for the Armed Forces has had a certain impact,” Gostev acknowledged.

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