Russia, which has a massive prison network inherited from Soviet labour camps, has one of the world's largest convict populations, though that number has been decreasing in the last 20 years.
The number of prisoners in Russia has dropped by more than 180,000 over five years, in part driven by Moscow sending convicts to fight in its war in Ukraine, Russia's prison chief said on Thursday.
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In more than four years of war, Russia has offered prisoners army contracts to fight in Ukraine and buy out their sentences, should they survive.
Russia, which has a massive prison network inherited from Soviet labour camps, has one of the world's largest convict populations, although that number has been decreasing in the last 20 years.
"If at the end of 2021 there were 465,000 (prisoners), then now there are 282,000," the head of Russia's penitentiary service, Arkady Gostev, told Russian state-run media.
That represents a drop of nearly 40%.
Around 85,000 of the current prison population is held in pre-trial detention, he added.
Gostev said the decline was in part driven by the army's recruitment drive, but also by more suspended sentences and other forms of punishment being handed out.
Prisoners returning from the war in Ukraine have led to an increase in crime and social tension in Russia.
Gostev also said thousands of prisoners were working on production sites in support of the army, contributing to the country's wartime economy.
Russian prisoners are often made to work, in a system inherited from the Soviet gulag.
"Over the course of the year, we had additionally deployed 16,000 inmates for these (army) purposes, specifically for manufacturing," Gostev said.
"We produce goods for the (war worth) around 5.5 billion rubles (€64 million)," he said.
"The volume of production in 2025 amounted to 47 billion rubles (€548 million)," he said, without elaborating how much of it was for army needs.
Russia has experienced a shortage of workers ever since going on a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, with hundreds of thousands of men at the front and a similar number fleeing the country due to mobilisation.