In mid-March, FSIN director Arkady Gostev said the prison service was facing an acute staffing shortage. Earlier, his deputy Aleksandr Rogozin said the nationwide average shortfall had reached 37%, while in some regions, including Tula, the lack of junior and mid-level staff was nearing 70%.
At the same time, the number of inmates has fallen sharply: according to official data, from 433,000 at the start of 2023 to 313,000 as of January 1, 2025. Even so, the personnel deficit kept growing. The rights project Otkrytoe Prostranstvo says that since 2022, 88 detention facilities have closed in Russia, but that has not solved the problem because many employees resign rather than accept transfers.
“The housing issue is one of the most important and urgent,” former FSIN analyst Anna Karetnikova said, explaining that staff from shuttered facilities are often unwilling to relocate for salaries of around 20,000 rubles.
According to the publication’s sources, the shortage affects detainees first of all: food quality declines, letters are checked more slowly, and prisoners’ daily needs move to the background. Karetnikova says understaffing hits “rights, not duties” of detainees, while tensions in colonies and pretrial jails rise as a result.
Employees and experts describe uncompetitive pay as the main cause of the crisis. An FSIN doctor in southern Russia said her colleagues earn 30,000 to 50,000 rubles, while doctors with the same experience in civilian healthcare receive 80,000 to 100,000. In Moscow, where the average salary exceeded 173,000 rubles at the start of 2026 according to Rosstat, vacancies at pretrial jail No. 2, Butyrka, were also far below that level.
A former prison transport officer said staffing in her unit had fallen from about 600 people to just over 200. She said that because of the shortage, “even mannequins are sometimes placed in guard towers,” and overtime has become routine. Karetnikova adds that one inspector is sometimes forced to cover two or three posts at once, increasing the risk of mistakes and serious consequences.
The war against Ukraine has become an additional factor. In March 2025, Gostev said that 3,592 current and former FSIN employees had gone to the front, 249 of them had been wounded and 343 had been killed. The outlet’s sources say some staff sign contracts with the Defense Ministry because of low incomes, while those who remain now have to escort inmates to border cities for transfer to the military.