theme 04.20.1999 (1999)

Every year, more than 1 million convictions in criminal cases are handed down in our country, 4 million people pass through the bullpen, at least 25 million through police cells and special detention centers.

At the threshold of a new century, the prison population of Russia is 1 million 14 people.

According to experts, every fourth adult man in our country is a former prisoner.

No country in the world in the XX century sent so many of its citizens to prison.

But no matter how we treat people behind barbed wire, they remain an integral part of our society.

The problems of reforming the criminal-executive system are discussed by the Minister of Justice Pavel Krasheninnikov, the head of the department of legislation on state security and law enforcement activities of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation Sergey Nikulin, chairman of the permanent chamber for human rights under the president Russia Valery Borshchev, a member of the Commission on pardons under the President of the Russian Federation Sergey Vitsin, journalist Sergei Gitman, a former prisoner Yuri Minaev.

The main topics of the discussion are amnesty and a new criminal code.

The program includes fragments of an interview with professor of sociology and law at the University of Oslo Thomas Matisen and professor of criminology Niels Christie on the impact of imprisonment on the physical and psychological state of people.