As a result “lifers” are not able to familiarize themselves with the prison layout and thus are unlikely to escape.Ĭonvicts are obliged to sleep with the bright light on and their heads toward the door, not covering their faces. While walking the inmate must keep his eyes closed, opening them only with the permission of the officers. Only after this, the escort, clasping inmate’s neck, pushes him out into the corridor. If the convicts are commanded to go out of the cell, they must move to the bars, touch the bars with their backs and stay bent to the floor, ready to be handcuffed by a guard. They must freeze in this position waiting for a guard’s command. With every sign of guards’ activity, such as opening of the small widow in the chamber’s door through which food is given to inmates, inmates must take “the original position”: hit the closest wall with their heads, with the bodies bent so the head is at the level of their knees, their arms behind their back risen up, with palms turned outwards, their eyes closed and mouths open. For other furniture, there is only a thin ledge on which four plastic mugs and wooden spoons are located. On the door there is a speaker broadcasting local radio – the only link of prisoners to the outside world. There are two bunk beds and benches on which convicts sit the whole day. After this procedure inmates are already in such a state that we very rarely need to use rubber batons and gas.”įour convicts are imprisoned in each cell. Convicts do not know that the dogs are on leashes, so they expect the attack at any moment. Dogs bark straight to their ears from the paddy wagon. “As we meet each new batch of prisoners”, Alexey Tribushnoj, Head of Political Education, told a Russian reporter “they pass blindfolded through the gauntlet of dogs. There is a very impressive National Geographic film about this prison.īelow is the information found from Russian sources. Nobody has ever escaped from this prison. The colony got its informal name from a fountain located in its yard with a sculpture depicting a black dolphin.Īccording to some unofficial reports the Black Dolphin is the colony with the strictest regimen in the world. The largest colony of this type in Russia is the Black Dolphin with 700 inmates and a penal staff of 900. The conditions created in the Russian colonies for “lifers” are considered, even by police, “death by firing squad in installments”. And, surprisingly, many “lifers” share this opinion.

The majority of Russians favours a return of the death penalty. There are more than 3500 people sentenced to life imprisonment today. In 1997, Russia replaced the death penalty with life imprisonment.

Black dolphin prison