Russia’s prison service says that 600 convicts will begin work on the Baikal-Amur Mainline railway this month. For some human rights activists and government critics, the idea of using prisoners for construction projects looks like a return to the gulag.
Follow RT on Russia’s notoriously tough and uncompromising prisons hardly have a reputation as a one-way ticket to the top, but for some lucky lags, inmate labor is proving to be an extremely lucrative sideline while they’re serving time.
The country’s Federal Penitentiary Service revealed to Moscow’s Izvestiya daily on Thursday that, while most prisoners take home peanuts in their pay packets for toiling in manual and industrial jobs, a small number were able to rack up relatively large salaries compared to their friends and families on the outside. Kristina Panshina, the department s spokeswoman, told journalists 715 new roles had been created across 11 regions of the country as part of a drive to increase the availability of work for those behind bars.
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