Exciting Prospect of Prison Interviews in Estonia

The project Director, Judith Pallot, and Dr Olga Zeveleva, one of GULAGECHOES post-doctoral researchers, spent the day in Tallinn in discussion with representatives of the Ministry of Justice and Prison Department of Estonia. The purpose of the meeting was to explore the possibilities of conducting interviews in the country’s three prisons in Tallin, Tartu Varga and Viru. The talks were extremely productive. A lot of useful and new  information was conveyed about the prison reforms in Estonia and the mentoring and accommodation services that are being developed by the Ministry of Justice to help prisoner re-entry.  The  prospects for developing the Estonian case study for the  GULAGECHOES project look extremely promising. Dr Anna Markina of the Law Department University of Tartu, set up the meeting and we are looking forward to future collaboration with her and with Mr Stanislav Solodov an analyst at the Ministry of Justice who heads up re-entry services.