There, says former Governor Gennadi Oreshkin, prisoners often collapsed from lack of oxygen or swollen legs. On a visit in 1994, a delegation from the Duma, the Russian parliament, found that cells designed for 28 people were housing up to 110 prisoners. Coyle also is a former prison governor, in his case of one of London's largest prisons. He says that he regards prison conditions as a human rights issue. Major cities across the former Soviet Union have Butyrka-type prisons.
Every major city has one.
Where the prisons are in a room this size and we would be told that it was built for 20 people. There are 40 beds in it, and there are 90 people in it, and they are locked up 24 hours a day. When you open the door, they're all standing there. This is why TB and disease are rampant because people will be there for up to two years. The U.N. special 'rapporteur' on torture, Professor Nigel Rodley, of Britain's Essex University, who visited two pre-trial prisons in Moscow in July 1994, called the conditions there infernal.