What do Russian prisons look like? Who is sent to prison in Russia? How is punishment allocated and administered? This pioneering book aims to answer these and other questions by embarking on a journey that begins by exploring how the prisons have survived the collapse of the USSR, and ends with a discussion of global penal politics. It is the first book to have been written in English on penal practices in the contemporary Russian prison system. Surviving Russian Prisons focuses in particular on the reality of work and labor within Russian prisons, exploring its changing function. From being...

This book is the first of its kind that brings together human geography and the sociology of punishment to explore the relationship between distance and punishment in con-temporary Russia. Using established penological and geographical theories, the book presents in-depth empirical research to show how the experiences of women prisoners are shaped by the distances that the Russian penal service sends prisoners to serve their sentences. Its most eye-catching feature is its use of interviews conducted by the authors and their research team with adult and juvenile women prisoners, ex-prisoners...

What do Russian prisons look like? Who is sent to prison in Russia? How is punishment allocated and administered? This book aims to answer these and other questions, exploring how the prisons have survived the collapse of the USSR, and discussing of global penal politics.