NCJ Number
142493
Journal
National Prison Project Journal Volume: 8 Issue: 2 Dated: (Spring 1993) Pages: 1-2,20-21
Date Published
1993
Length
4 pages
Annotation
The International Conference on Prison Reform in Former Totalitarian Countries took place in Moscow, Russia, in November 1992.
Abstract
Participants came from several former republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; the eastern european countries of Croatia, Hungary, and Poland; the western european countries of France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway; and the United States. Russian human rights activists, coordinated by the Moscow Helsinki Group, invited governmental officials, senior prison administrators, physicians, advocates with direct knowledge of prison conditions, and academics involved in legislative reform. Many of the organizers and participants had served sentences as political prisoners in the years before perestroika. Participants discussed the current prison conditions in Russia and the lack of resources to implement the recently enacted penitentiary code. They made site visits to prisons and a labor camp, confirming the reports at the conference. They also noted that the widespread amnesties for political and nonviolent prisoners in 1987-88 have reduced the inmate population by about one-third, to a rate below that in the United States. Nevertheless, no systematic method exists for reversing wrongful convictions, and Russians still strongly favor capital punishment. Photographs