Translated material
The difficult path to the ideal standard*
Print Piacentini Laura
I'm a Scottish prison sociologist. I spent 13 years studying the Russian prison system, first setting foot inside a Russian correctional facility in 1998. Since then, I have been able to collect data on 18 prisons in different parts of Russia. In this article I tried to summarize the main results of my work studying the labor of Russian prisoners. The conclusions I came to in no way characterize the entire correctional system as a whole. However, they raise before us a much broader question regarding the historical continuity of those practices that during this time were vital not only for the infrastructure of the places of detention themselves, but also for the entire Soviet society. In addition, the research project I worked on was related to the problem of managing the prison system at a time when the country, which had recently been compared to a huge punishment cell,1 was undergoing turbulent and very dramatic changes. Among other things, I want to take this opportunity to address the Russian audience and show what difficulties and pitfalls one has to face and what kind of pressure one has to experience, who, while remaining in “Western” positions, decided to do research work in Russia and trace the history of the development of the prison system to the present day.
How a prison is examined: a “Western” point of view
When it comes to prison conditions or the prevention of reoffending, there are no ideal or model prisons anywhere in the world. Countries may not be similar to each other, like Pakistan and Poland, and located in different hemispheres, like Norway and New Zealand; crime can affect public life in many different ways, and the variety of possible offenses is innumerable. However, everywhere in the world, prison remains an unchanging symbol of the same truism: society does not approve of crime. And I cannot even imagine a society in which, in one form or another, there would not be a “correctional system.”
In Western societies, problems associated with imprisonment have been explored in relation to a wide variety of social groups and relevant social relations; we could talk, for example, about the psychological adaptation of elderly and elderly male prisoners, about people sentenced to life imprisonment, about the work of prison guards, about keeping militants in Northern Irish prisons, about the organization of activities of female prisoners, about the value orientations of prisoners , about prison education, about the problem of prison suicides, about medical care, about the role of television in a person’s adaptation to the state of imprisonment and about the work of prisoners. The studies were comparative in nature, and material for comparative analysis was taken on the basis of various detention regimes, institutions falling under various jurisdictions operating in the United Kingdom; Less often, researchers made comparisons with foreign experience. A critical perspective helps to look at penal strategies from a broader perspective. Not long ago it was proven that the assessment and legitimation of “reintegration techniques” is carried out with an eye to their political effectiveness. The validity of the view that imprisonment is an integral part of punitive bodily strategies has received particularly strong support for female prisoners. As Hannah-Moffat argues, “In today's prisons, it is common to talk about problems of choice, correction and redistribution of power; However, most observers agree that little has changed with regard to the regime, and the lessons of the past have taught almost no one and almost nothing.” [1] . In the vast majority of monographs devoted to the problems of the penitentiary system, the starting point is the point of view of the researcher himself, and it should be especially noted that criminological works that focus on the feelings of prisoners and prison staff involved in the research process are very rare [2] . Much of the public debate revolves around the “success” or “failure” of incarceration practices. Is it any wonder that prison officers often complain of fatigue and boredom, and prisoners often complain of being depressed.
Prison Researchers and the Issue of Personal Engagement
Whether you conduct research in Russian or English prisons, you often encounter the same problems. If you are doing research in a prison, trying to remain completely neutral presents you with several dilemmas. And we are talking not so much about the permissible choice in favor of one of the parties, but about what kind of parties they are. Is it possible in principle for a researcher working in a prison to avoid personal involvement? It is important to recognize that prison research is influenced by many different factors, and therefore the first question to ask is what these influences are. Where do they come from? Can they seriously influence your research position? All these already difficult and confusing questions turn into a real methodological and intellectual puzzle when the researcher finds himself at once an observer, recorder and “marginal participant” [3] of certain situations in a very specific prison environment.
Let us first take into account that the problem of choosing a researcher's “position” can be traced back to the symbolic representation of prison in modern society. Public opinion on issues related to violation of the law varies in a very wide and emotionally charged range: from positions of uncompromisingly tough, noisy and populist-oriented (in this case, the argumentation system mainly goes back to newspaper headlines demanding quick and severe punishment for offenders) and to positions that can be designated by the term “rehabilitative optimism” (here we most often encounter people directly associated with the management of prisons, with zealous advocates of various kinds of “initiatives,” “interventionist” and “activity-related” strategies) - and a sharp The difference in approach itself suggests that, in general, there are two key aspects of penal practice. On the one hand, prisons represent the embodiment of the victory of society over uncontrollable individuals. Prison symbolizes everything that is base in human nature, and the fact that society deprives someone of freedom is an act of just retribution - and nothing more. Prison looks completely different from the point of view of the personal destinies of the people whom society places in places of confinement; individuals whose addiction to drugs or alcohol, economic difficulties, marginality and incompatibility with generally accepted norms serve, from the point of view of society, as a necessary and sufficient basis for setting up special detention centers for dangerous individuals. In prison - and this point of view also has quite strong grounds - those people end up in prison for whom society has failed. No matter how ambiguous and contradictory it may sound, imprisonment is a punitive practice that society resorts to for the purpose of self-defense, and, at the same time, a kind of flawed microcosm, the focus of social failure. That is why the position of the prison researcher is highly controversial. A sympathetic attitude towards the staff allows you to establish a trusting relationship with the guards; sympathy for the prisoners allows you to enjoy trust among the forced inhabitants of the prison.
Another component that influences the position of the researcher is the consequence of the fact that, as soon as you find yourself within the walls of a prison, you find yourself in a complex world in which the separate realities of staff and prisoners coexist within the framework of very difficult micro-situations associated with personal relationships and forms of social interactions—not to mention more general relations of mediation, management, and control. While clear dividing lines are drawn between prisoner and guard, distancing one from the other, there are other relationships, relationships of intimacy based on complex and inextricable connections. Unspoken contractual relations operate, the result of mutual willingness to take into account the interests of the opposing party and compromise. Prisoners and guards exist in equal conditions of geographical, emotional and social isolation from the outside world and are quite capable of resolving the contradictions that exist between guards, between prisoners, and between guards and prisoners, while forming a general relationship of solidarity and a common identity that helps to tolerate prison existence until the prisoner is released or the guard is sent home. The prison, its routine and ongoing control over physical and social interaction require both guards and prisoners to be constantly prepared to compromise, while generally being embedded in a purely masculine, harsh and hierarchically organized context. And yet, no matter how complex and multi-layered the prison world turns out to be, the researcher is often forced to make a decision and associate himself with one of the sides.
Another conclusion that you come to when doing research in prison is that, anywhere in the world, prison represents some kind of deviation from the norm. Although in relation to Russian prisons the last statement will not be entirely fair. Perhaps the most important of all my discoveries while working in Russia was this: for much of the 20th century, imprisonment was accepted as the norm, with both prison staff and prisoners representing cogs in the colossal political machinery of the Soviet regime. And it is this legacy that lies at the heart of the complex set of problems faced by all who try to reform the system, from the prison staff who manage the process, to the prisoners who gradually become accustomed to the fact that they are entitled to the minimum amount of life support is being brought up to international standards. And before moving on to some of the conclusions I have drawn from my research, it will be useful to give an idea of the difficulties facing current prison authorities by outlining the features of the Russian penal system throughout the 20th century.
Soviet prison ideology
The most important feature of the communist prison system was not that prisoners were involved in the implementation of incredibly ambitious economic projects, but that prison labor was seen as the main component that should ensure the development of the Soviet economy. In order to create a camp-industrial economic complex, political ideology had to be combined with reformatted and turned inside out legal norms. The definitions of crime and punishment have become an integral part of the general utopian project called the USSR: every crime is a relic of capitalism, thus the purpose of punishment is the political re-education of deviants from anti-Soviet into model proletarians and, therefore, into respectable Soviet citizens. Hooliganism was a crime because a person who breaks store windows and creates riots in the streets violates the harmony of Soviet society. Thus, criminals stood shoulder to shoulder with teachers, doctors, mothers and fathers of families in order to devote all their strength to work that would bring to life mankind’s long-standing dream of the Kingdom of God on earth. From a purely criminological point of view, such a myth-making project looks very daring. Prisoners must work on great economic construction projects and at the same time change their status, turning from stigmatized offenders to builders of communism. However, in reality, everything looked different: millions of citizens were arrested right on the street, at home, on the way to work and, after a secret trial, they were sent to camps, where slave labor awaited them, often with fatal consequences, in a variety of sectors of the national economy - from building railways to making school furniture.
If loyalty to the USSR was the ideological basis of penitentiary policy and criminal law, then the GULAG (Main Directorate of Camps) represented the mechanism through which Soviet ideology was put into practice: a huge industrial camp complex that carried out all economic projects. Created in 1934, the Gulag quickly transformed from a crime-fighting tool in the usual sense of the word into something more, taking on a number of government functions. By and large, the Gulag penitentiary system turned into an exaggerated copy of the Soviet bureaucracy and Soviet social control. Thus, it seems possible to conclude that in Russia the usual line of demarcation between the penitentiary system and society has become blurred. The prisons, no matter what terrible things happened in them, also fought for the common cause, in their own honest way and in their own valiant way. Throughout the Stalinist period (1926-1953), the entire USSR was built up with prisons. One can only guess about the true number of people who passed through Soviet prisons during this time. The most commonly cited figure is 12 million—as the most accurate, since it is based on the actual number of people who were imprisoned, and not on the total number of “repressed” (it includes many millions of people who were not sent to camps).
Publications of memoirs of former prisoners again and again depict the horrors of camp repressions, correlating the suffering they experienced with the experience of deep internal politicization. As it turns out, the Soviet prison was not a uniform system - neither as a field of unified human experience, nor as an institutional one. Andrew Meyer argues that millions of Russian people, including victims of repression, sincerely believed in Marxism-Leninism and its deep affinity with the national Russian soul; He further adds that Russians still have not learned to get along with their own past [4] . In the soul of a Soviet person, things that at first glance seem incompatible can coexist. The cities that grew up during the years of Stalin's terror became the heirs of the Gulag. The camp system created a powerful national economy in which jailers and prisoners shared a common sense of emotional kinship. However, if this system to some extent reflected the soul of the people, over time it began to look more and more terrifying. Memoirs of former prisoners touch on the issue of alienation, trying to answer questions about what it means to be Russian, and what it means to be unjustly convicted. In the years following the Stalin era, no significant progress occurred in the Soviet penal system. True rehabilitation—the recognition of a mistake committed by the state—did not immediately follow the dissolution of the Gulag with the death of Stalin in 1953. An official apology was made to the victims, but the state was not too willing to admit its guilt. Legal reform was hardly delayed Not until the mid-60s, ideological reforms completely stalled, and for many years after Stalin’s death the system did not undergo any significant changes.
In contrast to the Western experience, by 1991 Soviet Russia had long been accustomed to extracting economic benefits from its prisoners; and in a society fed on a diet of propaganda and fear, ideas about the social benefit their work could and should bring took very deep roots. Thus, the prison ethos only strengthened the already powerful cultural symbolism of the Soviet work ethic.
Russian prisons today
From my point of view, three phases can be distinguished in the development of the modern Russian penitentiary system: the period immediately following the collapse of the USSR, when the crisis of the system became obvious (phase I); the turbulent period of the mid-to-late 1990s, when the process of local specification of criminal proceedings made itself felt (phase 2); the modern era, characterized by a very high degree of borrowing from Western experience in the field of human rights, aimed at establishing new internationally recognized priorities in the field of prison management and detention (phase 3).
The first phase of prison reform in Russia - the system is in a state of chaos
The collapse of the USSR in 1991 had catastrophic consequences for the Soviet penitentiary system. Something unimaginable was happening behind the prison gates. Human rights violations, overcrowding, illness and torture were commonplace in Soviet prisons. Tuberculosis was common, and prisoners died from overcrowding and malnutrition. Now AIDS victims have also been added to the prison population. All these problems remain especially acute in pre-trial detention centers (SIZOs). Despite the fact that for several decades the Soviet prison system had already been the target of sharp criticism and serious revelations from dissidents, writers, political organizers and the international community concerned about human rights violations, the truly inhumane conditions that developed within it were as follows: described in the report of the UN Special Commissioner on Torture:
“The Commissioner would need the poetic talent of Dante or the painterly talent of Bosch in order to describe with any degree of adequacy the conditions he found in these cells. The senses of smell, touch, taste and sight are simultaneously subjected to the most blatant violence. The conditions there are cruel, inhuman and humiliating; they are akin to torture" [5] .
After the Soviet economy collapsed, prisons could no longer function as an industrial monolith. In addition, from the point of view of political ideology, a complete vacuum reigned. The prison world that I became acquainted with when I began my own research was in extremely deplorable physical conditions, but from an ideological point of view, chaos reigned in it. In 2001, the number of prisoners per capita in Russia was the second in the world (670 per 100,000), with 979,285 people held in places of detention of all types (compared with 130 per 100,000 in England and Wales, a total of 67,056 people in same year). At the beginning of 2006, the country had 209 pre-trial detention centers, 7 prisons and 141 pre-trial detention facilities, 767 correctional colonies and 62 educational colonies for juvenile offenders (14-17 years old). Of the 763,000 prisoners in 2005, 600,000 were serving time in colonies [6] .
The second phase of prison reform in Russia - local specification of criminal proceedings
For more than five months in 1999, I conducted ethnographic research to understand how the modern penal system survived the collapse of the Soviet prison monolith. I was interested not only in the specific types of work, specific programs and initiatives that replaced the camp-industrial complex, but also in the way in which prison staff perceived the place that the prison system occupied in “modern Russia” and the methods by which it was governed - now when, due to the historical changes that had taken place, there was no longer any reliance on any dominant ideology. The study was conducted in men's institutions of various types in Western Russia (Smolensk) and in Siberia (Omsk) - either directly in the institutions themselves or in close contact with them. During the 1999 study, I interviewed 31 prisoners and 193 prison staff. A second study was conducted in 2003, when a further 32 prison staff were interviewed. To say that my fieldwork was exciting and scary at the same time is an understatement. I had to demonstrate my sincere love for Russian culture by reciting poems by Russian poets before the interview; I had to demonstrate the proper way of thinking in an environment in which masculine values reign supreme both inside and outside the prison walls; I had to sing folk songs along with the interviewees during the interviews (and this was one of the most enjoyable parts of my job!). As a result, I came to the conclusion that the ideological changes that have taken place in the post-Soviet system are very significant.
I discovered that the central Moscow prison authorities, no matter how well-intentioned they were, were actually trying to maintain control over the entire prison system, unifying it as much as possible. I found a penal system based on contradictory and confusing ideas about what imprisonment is, perhaps simply because Russian society was going through a tumultuous and chaotic transition under President Boris Yeltsin. So, for example, in the western part of Russia, in Smolensk, I encountered new approaches based on Westernized ideas about what imprisonment (punishment and re-education) and crime (a criminal is bad from birth) are. Programs based on behavioral psychological approaches, calming public address broadcasts, and cognitive behavior therapy have spread at an impressive rate—in one case, such programs have been in use since 1993. Many prison guards and prison officials have had serious difficulties reconciling Western human rights rhetoric and crime-oriented approaches with existing real-life practices. Confused and anxious, people tried to survive in the ruins of the former prison industry. The prison system has acquired a ghostly autonomy. Regional authorities exercised control and oversight functions over existing practices and resources. At the same time, prisons maintained, at the federal level, a system of connections with the central Moscow administration. However, rapid political and economic changes, coupled with the obvious impossibility of direct control of such a large-scale system from Moscow, led to the flourishing of local initiative - both on the ideological and practical level.
A completely different picture emerged in the prisons of Western (Omsk) and Eastern Siberia (Kemerovo). In Omsk prisons, the old Soviet ethics has been preserved, according to which the basis for the re-education of a criminal is work. Here, respondents perceived criminal tendencies not as a congenital defect of the human personality, but as a consequence of the complex influence of social and economic factors: the decisive influence on prisoners, they assured me, is the environment, and not their personal characteristics. Prison authorities at the regional level focused primarily on the social consequences of offenses. Prisoners were actively involved in a range of community programmes, work and training projects, which in turn formed part of programs organized in conjunction with local schools, councils, universities and businesses. The leading principles were formed on the basis of such - rethought - Soviet concepts as “instilling a work ethic”, “responsibility for the results of one’s own work” and “atonement for the victim through work”.
All of these very different ideologies and practices were born after the collapse of the Soviet system. The industrial sector in Russia is underdeveloped, and attempts by prison structures to profit from unskilled labor have developed in different ways. In the eastern regions, to ensure the employment of prisoners, it was possible to resort to the development of natural resources: for example, in logging. At the same time, in the western part of Russia natural resources are not so abundant, and the local regions have to rely on light industry. Cheap imports from the Far East practically deprived prisons of any opportunity to survive on the market using their own labor resources. It is not surprising that with the decline in the importance of the manufacturing sector, alternative discourses begin to emerge in the prison management environment. In addition, Western Russia is often called European Russia. Prisons located here respond more readily to Western cultural influences than prisons located in other parts of the country: new ideas penetrate much more slowly to the penitentiary periphery. The international community continues to try to force prison authorities to answer for human rights violations taking place in Russian prisons. Versions of Westernized programs adapted to local conditions, if only because of their “Western” origin, can quickly increase the level of international trust. It is not surprising that many prison officials in the western part of the country constantly feel under control both from the Moscow authorities and from delegations of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which visit Russian prisons in order to monitor the human rights situation.
In many Russian regions, prison labor is a necessary necessity - if both prisons and the prisoners in them intend to somehow survive. It is assumed that the prison should rehabilitate prisoners and punish them for illegal behavior, but despite this, in Russia a prisoner must work not even for the benefit of the national economy, as was the case in Soviet times, but simply to earn a living . Under President Putin, the financial situation of the Russian government has improved significantly, but federal funds flow into correctional institutions irregularly, so the regions still have to run prisons. When allocating resources, the central government is based on what the prisons themselves can do to be self-sustaining, meaning their access to natural resources and markets. Every prison I've ever been to used a barter system to get more than they were entitled to. For example, a local farmer may need to repair his farm equipment. The farmer will go to local prisons and offer dairy products produced on his farm in exchange for repair services. Since barter in Russia is an everyday practice, the very fact of its penetration into the prison world is not surprising, but this fact shows how effective the private sector has become (in a not entirely commercial format) in terms of providing certain resources [7] .
On the other hand, prison barter adds a very interesting dimension to ideas about legal regulation at the local level. Prison barter seems to me to be a unique form of social patronage. Local communities have access to information about prison working conditions and production capabilities, prison staff actively seek opportunities for barter exchanges with local people - and as a result, the situation I witnessed in 1999 and 2003 confirms the generally accepted view of the need to involve local people in cooperation. communities to which it is so often customary to appeal in the British criminal legal system.
The third phase of prison reform in Russia - the advent of human rights
It must be admitted that what I encountered was neither a utopian vision of complete social inclusion, nor a bucolic idyll, nor a patriarchal unclouded system of relations between the local community and the prison. In the end, the structures with which I dealt were, and still are, primarily prison institutions with insufficient funding and conditions for prisoners that do not meet modern standards. Apart from the obvious economic and social benefits, prison barter practices merely attempted to expand the scope of what prison officials considered permissible for themselves as people charged with guarding prisoners. What might all these practices mean for a complex country like Russia, which is increasingly internalizing ideas about human rights? Having undergone a ten-year transition period, an era of turbulent political, economic and social change, the penitentiary system is evolving towards modernization through reform, the establishment of the rule of law, minimum standards and respect for human rights.
And various kinds of organizations, international and non-governmental, as well as constant monitoring can provide significant assistance in this. Inspections by “special commissioners” show that constant criticism can push Russia both towards further integration into the international community and towards political isolation. And this strategy is fraught with certain dangers.
If we look at the case of prison barter, it may seem that legal norms are being violated in Russian prisons, since in fact the daily duties of prison staff include the need to find resources in order to feed prisoners. And the prisoners, instead of working on their own re-education, simply earn their living. However, for most of the prison staff, the question of human rights generally seems inappropriate, since this concept was not formed for Russian prisoners and not in the Russian prison-administrative environment, but, on the contrary, was imposed on the country “from the outside.” One of the employees once told me: “This is all being done just so that we don’t live in peace. “Did you follow this procedure properly?” - "Yes sir". - “Did you treat so-and-so properly?” "Yes sir". If I had answered “no,” I would have received a scolding” [8] . Such views, of course, cannot be considered representative of the entire system as a whole, but one cannot help but recognize the obvious fact that those institutions that are the most effective, stand out from the general background and cooperate with the local population, face the greatest administrative difficulties. You can talk about human rights as much as you want - and very convincingly - from the Geneva corridors of power, but at the level of structures that solve specific problems, there will always be those who want to interpret these speeches in a very cynical way: as another manifestation of the “new political approaches” according to which countries have adopted divided into “right” and “wrong” depending on whether the prisons in these countries are “good” or “bad”.
Russian prisons today
Eight years have passed since the beginning of the new millennium, and the environment that I study has already changed quite significantly. Today, the Russian government's commitment to the ideals of human rights is already in serious doubt. The number of prisons remains very high and the conditions of prisoners continue to be of concern. In 2005, about 300 prisoners of one of the men's correctional colonies in the Kursk region organized a very significant mass protest, accompanied by acts of self-mutilation: they cut their wrists, stomachs, faces and legs, apparently protesting against violations of the rights of prisoners, beatings and brutal prison discipline. Hunger strikes were also reported, although not as widespread. Thus, as a specialist, I consider it necessary to note that researchers and human rights activists still face a very pressing task: to ensure that the authorities continue to implement reform of the penitentiary system.
When you observe a Russian prison from a “Western point of view,” you inevitably come to a number of very specific conclusions. First, the benefits of embarking on a path of human rights reform are quite clear. Where previously there would have been silence, abuses and human rights violations began to come to light. The government was forced to accept responsibility for the appalling conditions; the rights of prisoners are being legally consolidated. Practice shows that law enforcement agencies often provide prisons with a certain freedom of action precisely in order to obtain certain standards as a result, with which the legislative framework is subsequently harmonized. And there is a very serious and promising possibility that a different understanding of the problem of human rights in the penitentiary context could be followed by active work to expand the relevant standards already at the legislative level. Secondly, as the Kalashnikov case shows, the introduction of ideas about human rights gave birth to a new, previously unknown actor: the Russian prisoner, whose position has changed significantly since he felt himself a subject of international legal norms. Thirdly, it is necessary to pay attention to how the role of Russian prison staff will change, compared to the current one, as they become aware of themselves as part of an internationally recognized professional group.
Reform of the Russian penitentiary system has led to improved conditions for prisoners and higher standards. Despite this, it has made it more difficult than easier for us to try to seriously answer the questions that should be asked above all about any prison system as such: why do we punish? And what should modern, democratic prisons look like? Although the Russian ruling circles admitted that in the past there were violations of legal norms in the law enforcement system, this did not serve as a reason for creating effective mechanisms for assessing the degree of harm caused by the state to its citizens and compensating for it. Ironically, the introduction of human rights mechanisms did not actually affect the existing order of things at the structural level. Such mechanisms attempt to improve society by bringing institutions and norms into conformity with some ideal standard. However, political, economic and social progress achieved through “bringing up to an ideal standard” does not always have a positive impact on the penitentiary system. “Bringing to the standard” is a controversial process, since it is those countries that act from positions of political power that initiate it in weaker countries, as well as in the law enforcement and penitentiary systems of these countries. And in prisons, institutions that are usually outside the field of public attention, this problem only gets worse. If human rights in Russia—or any other country—are going to be truly prioritized, they will have to be combined with local cultural contexts, involving the local population in active participation in legal and law enforcement policies. Otherwise, human rights in penitentiary institutions, and even more so in transitional societies, will turn into a mirage, since trust in this ideal will be initially undermined by its “Western” origin.
* Translation from English by Vadim Mikhailin.
[1] Hannah-MofFat, К. Punishment in disguise: government and federal imprisonment of women in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001.
[2] Cm.: Bosworth, M., Campbell, D., Demby, B., Ferranti, S.M., Santos, M. (2005) 'Doing Prison Research: Views from Inside', Qualitative Inquiry, Vol. 11, Number 2, 205, pp. 249-264. This excellent article was co-authored by four prisoners and a prison researcher. Regarding personnel, see: Crawley, E. Doing Prison Work: The Public and Private Lives of Prison Officers. Cullompton: Willan Publishing, 2004.
[3] Sparks, R. “Out of the ‘Digger’: The warrior’s honour and the guilty observer”, Ethnography, Special Issue: ‘In and Out of the Belly of the Beast': Dissecting the Prison, December 2002, Volume 3, No. 4, p. 557.
[4] Andrew Meier Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After the Fall. New York: Norton, 2003.
[5] The United Nations, Economic and Social Council, 1994: 19.
[6] The majority of those sentenced to imprisonment in Russia serve their sentences in “correctional colonies,” which are closed, barracks-type institutions.
[7] Piacentini, L. ‘After the Gulag’ The New Humanist, March 2005.
[8] Piacentini, L. Op. cit.
“Prison vector” in the penal system Peers of the state