Corruption in penitentiary establishments: where is demand, there is supply

The corruptive ties of the prison personnel with convicts and their relatives appeared long ago. But now such ties achieved such a large scale, which was unbelievable before. This is a real market with demand and supply. The newspaper „Tiurma i volia’ (‘Prison and freedom’) often tells which are the methods used by various categories of the prison personnel to earn bread and butter. In particular, the controllers, whose duty is to prevent convicts to wander from one zone to another, get tips for the free movement, they get tips for the negligent search, they take bribes for looking aside in the room were convicts meet their outside visitors, they pass parcels (partly unloading them).

According to the words of the author of the articles, he spoke with visiting relatives. They willingly informed who takes how much and for what. The information was detailed: name, rank and so on.

‘Tiurma i volia’, 27 January 1999