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Teka Commission of Legal Sciences Polish Academy of Sciences Branch in Lublin

Vol. 18 No. 1 (2025)

Articles

Profound Change or Just a Facade? Legal Transformation of the Estonian and Latvian Penitentiary Systems

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32084/tkp.9213  [Google Scholar]
Published: 2025-07-31

Abstract

I investigated the process of transformation of penitentiary systems in two post-Soviet countries: Estonia and Latvia. Over the past 40 years, Latvia and Estonia have undergone reforms to their penitentiary systems bringing their prisons up to European standards. Both countries have abandoned the death penalty, and there are no political prisoners, and the development of democracy and the implementation of Western solutions have proceeded extremely quickly. However, the fundamental question is: to what extent were the changes to penitentiary systems profound and to what extent was it just a facade? To what extent is the readiness to train prison staff equivalent with a readiness to internalize Western standards? To what extent is the penitentiary system Western and to what extent it remains Soviet?

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