Authors

Judith Pallot¹;  ¹ University of Oxford, UK

Discussion

In this paper, I will discuss the use to which the Russia has put its prison system during the Russo-Ukrainian war. I will argue that the Ukrainian war has enhanced the role of imprisonment as a fundamental exercise of state power. I argue that both sides in the war have faced the challenge of incarcerating, managing and deciding the fate of large numbers of people, which has taken place against the backdrop of an ever-changing legal, strategic and geopolitical context. In the paper, I focus on how Putin’s revanchist politics has presented the Russian Federal Prison Service (FSIN) with new tasks to fulfil - providing recruits, transforming penal to war industries, detaining POWs, the integration prisons in the occupied territories and neutralizing dissent). I will discuss how these demands have created the dilemma for FSIN’s of how to fulfilling it patriotic duty without comprising its declared goal of humanising the prison asystem