Expert: Prison Does Not Rehabilitate Pedophiles

Retired Colonel Alexei Rodin, former head of the juvenile affairs department of the Main Directorate of the Interior Ministry for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, commented on the case of the murder of 9-year-old Pasha. The boy was abducted from a hypermarket parking lot; the suspect is Pyotr Zhilkin.

Rodin, who has 22 years of experience fighting rapists and murderers, claims that even long prison terms cannot reform those who commit crimes against children.

«Prison in these cases works not as a tool of correction, but as a tool of isolation. While a person is incarcerated, he does not commit crimes outside. Once he gets out, in the vast majority of cases the urge does not disappear. He may fear returning to the colony, may become more cunning, more cautious, but not a «law-abiding citizen.» This is not a matter of morality, but of psychiatry and biology,» the expert explained.

Rodin called such criminals «monsters who are drawn to children.» According to his observations, the risk of reoffending remains extremely high. «I have observed dozens of cases where a person served 15–20 years, got out, and within a matter of months returned to the same thing,» he stated. «Not because he was «poorly rehabilitated,» but because nothing inside him changed.»

The colonel concluded that prison only temporarily neutralizes the danger but does not eliminate the cause of criminal behavior.