MOSCOW, December 30 (RAPSI) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a bill to improve custodial conditions for pregnant women and mothers with kids aged up to 3 years into law. The document’s version has been published on the official website of legal information.

Amendments will be introduced into the Law Concerning the Detention of Persons Suspected and Accused of Committing Crimes. The State Duma adopted them on December 12. The Federation Council approved them on December 23.

The law sets sanitary standards equaling to at least 4 square meters for mothers jailed with children under the age of three years in one cell. Moreover, the initiative stipulates that pregnant women and women with kids be held separate from others kept in confinement.

Previously, such regulations apply to suspected and accused persons; and as children do not fall into these categories, they are held with their mothers in worse conditions.