Iskender Yasaveyev

I am sociologist studying how through the constructing of social problems people can change the social reality. I am not a pure theoretician but I also try to use constructionist strategies to attract attention of public and politicians to some situations that don’t have the status of social problem or are at the periphery of public discourse (among them the existing barriers for disabled people in Russian cities – the page of our project “City without barriers” in FACEBOOK.

One of situations that is not recognized as an important social problem in Russia (and also in the United States and some other countries) is a very high prison population rate. My country is on the third place in the world by prisoner rate (560 prisoners per 100 000 inhabitants; total number of prisoners is about 800 000). It means that significant number of people is in the situation of violation of human rights, violence, high risk of tuberculosis and other diseases and stigmatization as ‘criminals’ due to imprisonment but it’s not perceived in a society as a serious social problem. The widespread public attitude in Russia is that “criminal must be in the prison” (“vor dolzhen sidet v turme”).

At the same time Finland occupies one of the last places in Europe in terms of prison population rate (60 prisoners per 100 000 inhabitants by January 2011) though at the beginning of 1950s the number of prisoners was about three times higher and Finland was famous as a “land of imprisonment”. I hope that Finnish experience of penal reforms which demonstrates that it is possible to reduce significantly the number of prisoners and it will not lead to any increase in crime level can influence the attitudes of both professionals and the public in Russia concerning the intensive use of the imprisonment and contribute to changes in penal policy.

I study contemporary organization, principles, rules and practices in Finnish prisons, both closed and open ones, and translate works of Finnish criminologist into Russian. I hope that in a few months the book called “From the land of incarcerations toward the society with the limited use of pain: Finnish experience of the reduction of the prison population” will be published in Russia.

I have already visited some Finnish prisons and I am glad to discuss the features of Finnish and Russian penal systems with everybody who is interested.

I am happy that my family is with me here and very thankful to Kone Foundation and the staff of the Saari Residence for this wonderful possibility.