Author: ninto

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Visit to the GULAGECHOES project of Pastor Avo Üprus of the Baltic Crime Prevention Institute, Estonia.

Avo Üprus and Markku Kangaspuro

On 10th  November 2021, Gulagechoes welcomed Avo Üprus to the Aleksanteri Institute. Avo has been giving valuable assistance to the Estonian leg of the project. Avo was deeply involved in the discussion about prison reform that took place in Estonia in the early 1990s and for the past thirty years has devoted his time to supporting people who are serving sentences in Estonia’s prison or who have recently been released from prison and need help to re-adjust to ‘life on the outside.’ Whilst in Helsinki, Avo signed a Memorandum of Understanding on behalf of the Baltic Crime Prevention Institute of Estonia and the Aleksanteri Institute to continue the cooperation with the gulagechoes project.

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What lies behind FSIN’s promoting of “forced labour used as an alternative to deprivation of liberty”?

BY PROFESSOR JUDITH PALLOT

In a new article in Riddle, an online journal on Russian affairs, project PI Judith Pallot discusses how to interpret the recent announcement that the Russian Prison Service to contract out = penal labour to work on the BAM railroad.  The publication is available in Russian and in English. A longer version is available here on the project blog.

 

Last month FSIN (the Russian Federal Corrections Service) made the startling announcement that it was negotiating a contract with the Russian Railway Authority to use penal labour to work on the Baykal-Amur railway project.  FSIN’s right to sub-contract out penal labour to private companies and other state agencies is an extension of the punishment of ‘force labour as an alternative to deprivation of freedom’ (принудительные работы применяются как альтернатива лишению свободы) which was added to the criminal correction code in 2011.[1]

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