Crime, Punishment--and the Problem of SIZOs


Founded in 1988 in cooperation with Andrei Sakharov, the Moscow Center for Prison Reform (MCPR) claims to be one of the oldest nongovernmental organizations in Russia. Its director, Valery Abramkin, is a former political prisoner and current member of the Presidential Council on Judicial Reform. He is the author of numerous articles and books on the problems of the criminal justice system and also produces a Radio Rossiya weekly program for prisoners, known as Oblaka (“Clouds”).

MCPR has developed proposals that influenced laws adopted by the Russian Parliament in 1992 and the “Federal Program on Human Rights,” issued by the president in October 1994. Staff have written scores of articles for the popular press, as well as produced a 10-volume series, Criminal Russia—Prisons and Camps. In 1992, 30,000 copies of the MCPR book, How to Survive in a Soviet Prison (also known as Help for the Prisoner) were distributed free of charge to prisoners and their families.

This year MCPR published In Search of a Solution: Crime, Criminal Policy and Prison Facilities in the Former Soviet Union. The book, in English, was produced in cooperation with other non-governmental organizations in Russia, Kazakstan, Belarus and Azerbaijan, and with the financial support of the Phare/Tacis Democracy Program of the European Union, the European Human Rights Foundation (Brussels), the Jewish Community Development Fund/Tides Foundation (US), Penal Reform International (London), the Moscow branch of the Open Society Institute, and the Danish Center for Human Rights (Copenhagen).

At the end of 1995, Russia’s penal institutions held more than 1.2 million people. In Search of a Solution focuses special attention on the problem of the sledstvennii izolatori (SIZOs), pretrial detention facilities which are grossly overcrowded, dangerous, and never intended for long-term incarceration. 295,000 persons charged with crimes awaited trials in Russian SIZOs in 1995, and it was estimated that more than half of these would serve out their entire sentences in these facilities. For more about SIZOs and other matters discussed in In Search of a Solution.

This article is from the September/October 1996 issue of
Civil Society ... East and West

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The URL for this page is: http://solar.rtd.utk.edu/~ccsi/csew/96-09/sizos.htm
Last updated: March 1997

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