Prisons of Russia, Ukraine, France, Germany : Questioning Prison Violence

Almost twenty years after the European Court of Human Rights affirmed the right to decent conditions of detention, has this aspiration for a violence-free sentence succeeded in counteracting operation modes usually described as inherent to prison? Has the European project for common minimum standards succeeded in overcoming national penological conceptions and professional cultures, in other words overcoming the historical inertia of prison? What resistance/adaptation strategies have deployed prison administrations in response to these reform injunctions? In view of these experiences, what are the ways out of prison violence? Can civil society actors force these transformations? In particular, can lawyers help maintaining vigilance? The Seminar is held as part of the European Lawyers' Day and will bring together former detainees, researchers, civil society leaders and lawyers to discuss the issue of prison violence as is manifest in Western (Germany, France) and Eastern former soviet (Russia, Ukraine) European prison systems.