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Abstract: Recent prison reforms in Russia feature humanization discourse. At the same time, prison regimes have become increasingly tight. Drawing on 29 semistructured interviews with former and current inmates, prison officers, and experts collected between 2017 and 2020, this paper analyzes methods through which prison officers seek to achieve the loyalty of prisoners and prevent their resistance. Prison officers aim to achieve internal legitimacy-that is, inmates' voluntary acceptance of the prison order. To this end, they employ such methods as controlling the self-governance of loyal prisoners and suppressing (sometimes violently) those who are resistant to prison authorities. However, these measures have drawbacks associated with an insufficient level of procedural justice. The brutal crackdown on prisoners makes them feel insecure, forcing them to choose between several alternatives: obey the officers to avoid punishment, work for the prison administration, or seek protection from criminal leaders.
Russian media and human rights activists regularly report human rights violations in penal institutions. Historically, prisoners who have failed to get reparations in their own country have appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. Between 2015 and 2020 the Russian government paid ex-prisoners a total of €3.5 million in compensation due to violations of article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Some complaints have been connected with poor living conditions, others with cruel treatment and torture.1 The most recent case of mass torture in a Russian prison was made public in the fall of 2021 thanks to the nization Many videos of violence against inmates in penal institutions have appeared in the media.2 This case sparked public outrage, the dismissal of some prison officials and workers, and public debate about changes to the criminal law on acts of torture. As a result, issues of prison social order in Russia are now being discussed with renewed vigor. The present article contributes to these debates by shedding light on how prison violence is rooted in prison social order and the structure of interactions between inmates and prison workers.
Prison social order is an important object of study. First, social order in penal institutions and the practices of prison workers are related to benefit-sharing among inmates, which can reduce or exacerbate social inequality between them. Second, to achieve their desired level...