3. Russian Federation
Prison population: 642.444
The prison population has almost halved in last fifteen years in Russia. While in 2000 there was a little more than one million inmates, in 2014 their number were 642.444. Russia is the only country on this list that has not reached its prison capacity. According to latest available data from 2013, the occupancy rate is 94.2.
Notoriousness of Russian penal system dates back to mid eighteen century when Russian authorities started to send petty criminals and political opponents to the Siberia, country’s harshest place. Many famous Russians served their time in Siberia. Then, in the first half of 20th century, under Stalin regime, a new form of forced labor, Gulag, was established. While in modern Russia such extreme forms of incarnation no longer exist, imprisonment of those who are perceived as political opponents still takes place. In 2012 members of Pussy Riots were imprisoned after their performance in an Orthodox cathedral that was characterized as hooliganism. One of the group’s members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova described abuse, violence and exploitation in the prison in the open letter that Guardian published.
