Professor Bill Bowring’s guest this week on “25 Questions” is Liudmila Alpern, a researcher and observer of Russian prisons and penal colonies with a special interest in conditions in places of detention for women. Liudmila Alpern formerly worked as deputy director of the Centre for Criminal Justice Reform, headed by Valery Abramkin, where she was head of the prison visiting programme. She has been a member of the Moscow Public Oversight Commission and is the author and developer of many prison projects, including a multi-year joint project by the Public Monitoring Commission, the Human Rights Ombudsman and the Council of Europe and the ‘Women in the Criminal Justice System’ project that won the French Human Rights Award in 2003. Her publications include the book “Dream and Reality of Women’s Prisons [«Сон и явь женской тюрьмы»]- a comparative analysis and history of women’s prisons in Russia, Poland, Norway, USA and Spain.The video can be viewed on YouTube and below.
