World
WTF? Russia bans swearing in jails
IMAGE: ALEXANDER DEMIANCHUK/TASS
In Vladimir Putin's Russia, there will be no swearing in jail.
Under a new rule imposed by the country's Justice Ministry, detainees in pretrial detention centers will be prohibited from speaking in the salty Russian prison slang known as fenya, the Interfax news agency reported Thursday.
Specifically, inmates will not be allowed to speak to each other in "threatening, insulting, defamatory language or slang."
According to a 2002 story in The Moscow Times, fenya, "the language of the camps and prisons," has been around for decades and even infiltrated modern Russian language as inmates were released.
"Developed over decades, it is made up of thousands of words and expressions that describe everything from a corpse (zhmurik) to a scam (kinut)," read the article. "As the zeks(prisoners) left the zone, they took their language with them, and fenya has infiltrated standard Russian to the point that many speakers don't even know the unsavory derivations of the words they are using."
It's unclear how authorities will enforce the new rule and what punishment awaits offenders.
The swearing ban is the latest effort by Russia's Justice Ministry to crack down on the use of fenya. In 2013, it imposed a similar rule prohibiting prison guards from speaking in the notoriously filthy slang to each another and to inmates.
The bans are merely part of the the broader conservative turn by Russia under the rule of President Vladimir Putin to promote Orthodox Christian and family values.
In 2014, Putin signed a law banning all swearing in Russian films, theaters, television broadcasts and the media.
Not all of the language outlined in the newest rule is bad, however. It does grant pretrial detainees who often sit in cells for long periods of time permission to have and use items such as electric kettles, shower gel, shaving gel, deodorant (excluding aerosols) and electronic devices that cannot access the Internet, which they were previously prohibited from possessing, according to the Justice Ministry.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
