In transit, towards transformation? Penal change in Russia in a contested political landscape

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Piacentini, Laura Francesca (2025) In transit, towards transformation? Penal change in Russia in a contested political landscape. Law & Social Inquiry. pp. 1-20. ISSN 1747-4469 (https://doi.org/10.1017/lsi.2025.10095)

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Abstract

Russia’s penal system was arguably the largest penal system of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, law and society and criminological research continues to neglect the subject. This article presents a new theoretical and analytical framework that seeks to understand penal development in Russia from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 until the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The new theoretical framework—penal transformation—aims to locate significant periods of penal change in diverse and disputative external, compliance-building, and bureaucratic regimes. It argues that the Council of Europe’s compliance rules, and the escalating authoritarianism of the Putin regime, have together hindered a more refined approach to the study of the prison in state-society relations. When considered alongside legacies of the Soviet Gulag penal system, this scenario has created an enduring penal structure and culture where prisoners remain acutely vulnerable to rights violations.

ORCID iDs

Piacentini, Laura Francesca ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3817-6012;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)