Punishment as a crime. Why the penitentiary system is to blame for the riots of Russian prisoners
The tragedy in IK-19 – the seizure of employees hostage by convicts and their brutal murder, and then the murder of the invaders themselves – once again stirred up public interest in the topic of prison and gave rise to disputes: how this could happen and what led to it. Exactly the same questions were asked after the June hostage-taking of employees of pre-trial detention center-1 in Rostov-on-Don. Most likely, riots will continue, and the reason for this is a whole range of reasons: unbearable conditions of detention, discrimination against Muslims, lack of prison staff and their low level of training. The situation can only be corrected by completely dismantling the penitentiary system, which directly inherits the Gulag, and creating a new one based on the principles of humanism in its place,” says Anna Karetnikova, a former leading analyst of the Federal Penitentiary Service in Moscow.