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Parcels for a convict |
“My son has recently been jailed and officers in the prison camp have assured me at the first meeting that `there is everything’,” an inmate’s mother, Saida, has said.
What officers of prison camp 64/49 said can also be confirmed by the penal code’s Article 86 (Material support for convicts), which says convicts are “supplied with standard seasonal clothes, underclothes and shoes, considering their sex and climate conditions, from the national budget”.
“But when visiting to my son I found out that this is not so at all,” Saida said.
One shop for 3,000 inmates
Saida said that, after eating plenty of home-made snacks, her son had started making a list of what his mother would need to bring him to the camp. The list included 35 items.
The son asked her to bring him a toothbrush and toothpaste, a soap dish, a towel to wipe his legs, electrical shaver, a shaving cream and an aftershave, notebooks, envelopes with stamps, a dozen of ball pens, bathroom slippers, a nail cutter and handkerchiefs.
“My son explained me that they are paid pennies for their work in the brick plant and there is only one small shop for 3,000 people in the prison camp. There is always a queue there, so it is better to bring everything from home,” Saida said.
Prison camp needs overalls and bedsheets
However, Saida cannot understand why this list included two prison overalls, two pairs briefs, a bathroom towel, a bath sponge, six packs of laundry soap, four packs of detergent, boots, a boot brush and 10 tubes of shoe polish.
The list also had other items such as five pairs of socks, three packs of toilet paper, two bedsheets, two pillow cases, two blanket covers, an enamelled cup and spoon, needles and other items.
“But are all these not referred to as `standard seasonal clothes, underwear and shoes’ which is provided for by the penal code
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Norms of clothing allowance for convicts |
?” Saida wonders.
No, Saida is wrong. A woman in Tashkent, who asked for her name to be kept in secret, has said that when her son was in the same 64/49 prison settlement, she addressed a legal company where she received an official response with the printout of appendix No 2 of the penal code.
The appendix points to a full list of clothes and other items provided for inmates at the cost of the state. The appendix has all essentials, including even sports shoes.
Products asked to be brought in big amounts
Saida was also troubled by another list that her son made up. This one included 18 items of foodstuff.
The list included by one kilogram of lump sugar, the Tashkent black tea, smoked sausage, sausage cheese, butter, halva, walnuts and raisins.
It also included one can of condensed milk, two kilograms of caramel, some tinned fish, seasoning, mayonnaise, ketchup, one pack of Galina Blanca, five 5-litre plastic bottles of mineral water, fruits, vegetables and by one litre of current jam, honey and melted nutria oil.
“My son only drank green tea and could not stand ketchup, tinned fish, raisins, Galina Blanca cubes and, moreover, melted nutria oil – does he really dreams of eating these in the prison camp?” Saida says.
At the same time, her son has liked tinned stewed meat and dried fish but he did not ask for these products.
Who gets parcels?
“I have talked to other mothers whose sons are also imprisoned in prison camp 64/49. They said their kids also wrote letters asking for products that they had never consumed and cigarette brands they had never smoked,” Saida said.
She thinks that the majority of parcels of products and clothes reach anyone but the addressee.
“Either camp kingpins or camp guards force our boys to ask all these from their parents,” Saida suggests.
She is convinced that prison overalls, which can be bought at Tashkent’s Yangiabad flee market, is part of the state subsidy provided for prisoners.
Prison parcels may
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A convict’s letter (anything that may disclose the author is erased) |
“My son asked me to bring him products and clothes worth 600,000 sums in total (over 210 dollars at the black market rate) but this is a huge amount of money for me,” Saida said.
According to her, other parents of inmates say this is only for a start. Convicts can be visited two times in a quarter, that is one 2-hour visit and one for the whole day, six parcels by 2 kg each and one annual parcel of 10 kg. Every time, sons write a letter with a long list of what they need to get.
“I have heard that one old woman sent five cups, each costing 12,000 sums, but her but her son is already asking for the sixth cup,” Saida complained.
Saida’s son still has seven years to spend in prison but for this period her family may just ruin themselves because of parcels, the woman fears.
Those who have been released from prisons flatly refuse to tell about what happened to parcels their mothers sent them but many mothers of inmates in prison camp 64/49 tend to think that it is the staff of the prison administration that make profit on convicts.
Uznews.net
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