MOSCOW, March 1 (RIA Novosti) - There are 878,000 people currently being held in prison and detention facilities in Russia, a penitentiary official said Thursday.
"About a third are under 25 years," said Yury Kalinin, head of the Federal Penitentiary Service.
He added that some 400,000 convicts were suffering from a mental illness and 46% of prisoners were serving a second prison term.
According to the Federal Statistics Service, Russia's population was 142.2 million in 2006.
