Authors

Jeffrey Kahn⁴; Sergey Golubok ³; Gavin Slade²; Costanza Curro¹; Brendan Humphreys¹;  ¹ Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki, Finland;  ² University of Astana, Kazakhstan;  ³ ., United States;  ⁴ Southern Methodist University, United States

Discussion

The imagined role of imprisonment varies markedly between the former communist countries of Europe and Eurasia. Critics of the Russian prison system insist that it is nothing less than a neo-gulag used to repress social non-conformity, petty crime and political dissent, while in Estonia the construction of three brand new western-type prisons is presented as evidence of the country’s adoption of a civilized, north European, approach to addressing offending behaviours. The roundtable brings together sociologists, geographers, historians and criminologists involved in projects on penality in Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Estonia and the Balkans. The discussion will broadly revolve around the impact of punishment and penal policies on identity construction - social-cultural, economic, ethnic, linguistic, gendered, generational, regional and ideological - both inside prisons and in wider society, the growth in some countries of a form of ‘penal nationalism’ that uses imprisonment to define national belonging, and the relationship of current prison systems with its Soviet past.