The closed nature and, deep-rooted caste system have remained unchanged for years with in the Russian penal system because of the system's political immunity. These are the main causes of the unpunished rape of prisoners and the making of pornography.

It should be noted that communication equipment is prohibited in FSIN institutions, so why do prisoners still have the opportunity to use cell phones?

The first reason is that staff does not perform properly their duties in seizing prohibited items including cell phones.


The second reason is that staff of FSIN know who has phones but remain tolerant to them as they are prisoners who cooperate with the administration. The problem is that phones are used to shoot (perhaps in FSIN institutions) and then also to leak or sell this content.

Staff are likely involved in this process, no matter how, they may not sell the content but , for example, bring cell phones for fee.

People in prisons have access to the Internet, they can make videos, selling or posting it online. At what time prisoners can write? Usually they go online after administration's day end: in the evening, at night or in the early morning. You can identify if a person is actually serving a time by speech: for example, he or she speaks in slang and knows prison terms. Nowadays, there is almost no prison lingo, but some kind of prison slang still exists.

It is possible that the person who generates/sends these advertisements does have experience of imprisonment or is currently in prison or remand centre. The photos were taken in the pen (penal colony), but most likely they have nothing to do with the seller.

In general, while I was talking to this person, I got a feeling that he was working with "scripts,", that is, when I was asking him something, he answered me with a pre-written message. I think it's a salesman who is working with multiple tabs. That is, the same faces, similar pictures, similar messages...


Probably, the prison homosexual porn is also a fetish, a preference like BDSM, for example, and when there is interest, there are those who want to earn money from it.


"The fact that they communicate in scripts is a sign of a professional approach, a sign of a proven technology and process optimization in order to reduce time per customer. And, as a result, to sell as much as possible and get more money. Why do they have to think about dialogue every time if they can use ready samples?


Initially, we were not sure that videos which were sent to Vitaly were actually filmed in prisons. But after we heard his the story, we assumed that real porn shot in closed institutions is sold through social networks, and that phenomenon could be systemic. Such violations are fully integrated into the overall picture of the Russian penal system with its caste and closed nature.

Wherever people find themselves: in the army, in the monastery - sexual drive is there. Social and sexual processes are intersecting there and expressed in certain ways. To start to work with this problem, it must first be recognized. It is the same at the level of а person who does not recognize his phobias, fears and traumas. And we are not going to get anywhere until the person admits. The same with the state. Until the state says: "Yes, there are problems with it and let's do something about it," nothing will change.

All the processes in the penal colony are acute. If a person is not respected as a person in society, and his life and health are not valued, then nothing better could be expected from prisons. We think that this is terrible. But look at how our hospitals treat pensioners, children and mothers. Or when a woman who is a victim of domestic violence comes to the police and they tell her: "Come when you will be killed." It's not even exaggerations, these are real answers.

Disrespect for man and his rights in penal institutions just takes a concentrated form. There is nothing there that would not be widespread in our society. Women, children and men in Russia face sexual violence outside of prison as well.

But "in the pen", if you are at the bottom of the prison hierarchy, in the category of "offended" (as a rule, open gays, bisexuals, transgender people fall into that category automatically), then you have virtually no choice. Compulsion to sex is not a criminal offence there, but a common thing, a daily reality. We see in the prison porn videos wherein a person in the receiving role is almost always perceived as an object and not as a subject of a relationship.

It's enough to look at the titles of the videos on the screenshots: "Working hole", "Holey mouth", "Caucasian petukh (rooster, faggot)", "Prag", "Petukh Fedya serves", "F#@ a rooster in the shower room", "Petukh is working", "Fucking petukh", "Petukh in the warehouse", "Fucked petukh right on the bunk". He is not even a person anymore; he's either a receiving part "hole", "mouth", or something despicable: "rooster", "prag", etc., at best "service staff". It becomes clear why in any video we don't see that a person is asked to consent to filming and posting explicit materials on the Internet.

Rather we see that sometimes the "offended" themselves accept the status quo, and then we can talk about a kind of "Stockholm syndrome". For example, "I'm a slutty faggot and I like it" - the name of one of the photo albums in the "Prison roosters" community.

In addition to the purely sexual aspect, the attitude of power - subordination, self-affirmation of an active partner at the expense of humiliation of the passive is also obvious. If we go beyond the prison system, we can see that this discourse is quite often used in Russian life. "Let's bend America", "Let them suck", "We can repeat" (the picture where a man with a head in the form of a star "bends" a man with a head in the form of a swastika), etc. It is clear that this attitude is in many ways transferred to LGBT people, generating aggression against them, and even hate crimes.

In other investigations we have already said that the whole complex of problems, of human rights violations is tied to the peculiarities of the Russian penal correction system, which were inherited from the Gulag.

Therefore, we can assume that such videos can appear in any country that was a part of the Soviet Union, except the Baltic States, which have a different system in place for a long time now. In European countries, the prison population is much smaller; there is a completely different approach, other number of institutions and staff.

If a prisoner does not have sex voluntarily, it is not just a human rights violation, but a crime that should be investigated, and the perpetrators should be punished.

The "offended" person is forced to have sex and participate in porn videos, and then the content will be posted and sold for money. If we are talking about systematic sexual violence, it is torture, which is filmed and sold, and for which the sellers of this content receive money. Moreover, this content is not necessarily sold by those who shot it; they can share it to boast, to show off their privileged position in the pen.

What's to be done? The penitentiary system will not change by itself, it suits everyone: the prosecutor's office, the police, the judicial system, the investigation committee, the Federal Prison Service, everyone, even the prisoners themselves. There are "offended" people in this system who can be used in the most dirty work, raped, filmed...