Russia will introduce a new type of punishment, restriction of freedom, which may replace prison for those convicted of minor and medium severity crimes. They will be banned from restaurants and cinemas, from leaving school or work without permission, and in some regions electronic bracelets will be used to track their location. The article also explains why the justice system is betting on a more humane alternative to imprisonment.

A new type of punishment - restriction of freedom - will appear in Russia. Instead of imprisonment, a person convicted under a criminal article may be given the right to serve the sentence under house arrest.
This applies to crimes of minor and medium gravity. At the same time, it will be forbidden to visit restaurants and cinemas, or to leave the place of study or work without permission. In addition, such convicts lose the right to choose where they live. Freedom may be restricted for a period from 2 months to 4 years. And one more innovation - so-called "electronic bracelets" are being introduced in four regions of Russia. They will signal a person's whereabouts. Irkutsk Region is not yet participating in this experiment. At present, the alternative to deprivation of liberty is a suspended sentence. There are more than 14,000 such convicts in our region - as many as are held in the colonies of the Angara region.
Judging by the ideological thrust of the reform, certain types of punishment will be subjected to further humanization, liability for minor offenses will be decriminalized, crimes of medium gravity (first of all, this should concern juvenile offenders) are planned to be transferred to the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Offenses, and the institutions of re-socialization of convicts will be significantly modernized.
At the same time, according to the Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation Vyacheslav Lebedev, "the state's approach should consist not in having as few convicts as possible serve their sentences in places of deprivation of liberty, but in excluding cases of sending to the relevant institutions those persons whose correction can be achieved by other, alternative types of punishment."
Today, there is indeed a need to improve the practice of imposing punishments in various cases, applying a preventive measure in the form of detention for minor crimes and crimes of medium gravity, and introducing new types of punishment that are not related to deprivation of liberty, such as bail and house arrest.