ABOUT 50,000 WOMEN SERVE TIME IN RUSSIA'S PRISONS AND COLONIES








MOSCOW, March 6. /RIA Novosti correspondent Gennady Lisenkov/. About 50,000 women are serving time in Russia's prisons and colonies, Colonel of the Interior Vladimir Demchenko, deputy head of the pretrial detention centres and prisons unit of the Russian Justice Ministry's main correctional department, told a news conference on Tuesday.


	In 10 out of 34 correctional colonies with women inmates there are child centres bringing up about 500 children under three years of age, the colonel said. In 64 educational colonies there are about 18,000 minors, of whom one thousand are girls.


	As many as 16,000 gifts were issued to prisoners during Christmas Behind Bars 2001 action, Valery Abramkin, head of the centre for criminal judicial reform, told the news conference. The action was sponsored by 20 Russian and Western non-government organisations and funds, human rights commissioners from a number of regions, and staff of pretrial centres and colonies. Presents were distributed to nearly 80 penitentiary institutions.