Surveillance systems in modern cities are often regarded as the great state panopticon of omnipresent cameras. Here we challenge this view by empirically analyzing the spatial context of CCTV equipment in four European capitals: Moscow, Paris, Brussels, and Edinburgh. We gather locations of CCTV equipment installed in public places by city officials and train a machine learner to predict camera locations given the urban morphology. We then discern differences and commonalities in surveillance system design across the cities. Only in Paris CCTV equipment is found to be evenly distributed throughout the city, resembling a panopticon. In Brussels and Edinburgh CCTV equipment forms an intangible wall in the city center and on the outskirts, resembling a medieval fortress. In Moscow we observe a paternalistic approach where children-related places are more likely to be covered by CCTV equipment. The paper concludes by arguing that CCTV equipment should be conceptualized not as a surveillance system, but as an element of urban security infrastructure.
The preprint is avaliable by the link.
Juniour researcher IRL Dmitrii Serebrennikov and Julia Kuzmina had an article published in Journal of Economic Sociology (Ekonomicheskaya sotsiologiya). The paper is review of Donald Rubin causal model in the current field experiment researches. Text is availiable by link (in Russian).
The text discusses the basic principles of the organization of prison medicine in several countries: Russia, the USA, Scotland, the Netherlands, and France. In the United States, treatment for prisoners is partly provided by private medical organizations. Prisoners in Scotland and France receive medical care from civilian medical institutions. In the Netherlands and Russia, by contrast, prison medicine is subordinate to the penal systems. The review is intended for public administration specialists, researchers of prison systems, and human rights advocates.
This article describes and analyzes the specific features of medical workers’ professional identity within the framework of the Russian penal system. The authors have studies the position of doctors in the organizational structure through the prism of Eliot Freidson’s concept of professional autonomy and Erving Goffman’s notion of the total institution. The empirical material is based on twenty-two semi-structured interviews with prison doctors, correctional officers, former prisoners, and human rights advocates. Organizational factors are vital for understanding the position of doctors: within the Russian penal system, doctors are not subject to the Ministry of Health, but to the Ministry of Justice. What emerges from this research is that the professional identity of doctors is mixed with institutional identity which resulted in a shift of loyalty from the patient toward a total institution. Despite prison doctors are formally independent from the prison administration, the professional autonomy of medical workers is limited significantly. In particular, they are restricted in following the professional ethical standards. In prisons, security is given a clear priority over healthcare. Doctors can work only through a system of ‘mutual concessions’ with correctional officers and the prison administration. These and some other conditions transform the doctor-patient relationship, creating an additional distance between them.
The paper is available by the link (in Russian).
The text is available by the link (in Russian).
The report is devoted to the issues of social adaptation of convicts during and after serving prison sentences. The relevance of the topic is associated with a high level of post-release recidivism in Russia. The author analyzes of statistics, Russian legislation, semi-structured interviews with prison officers, human rights activists. As a result, authors have found that in penal institutions, there are several areas of rehabilitation of convicts, in particular, labor, education, psychological support, medical assistance, and some other. Besides, inmates receive assistance from their families and non-profit organizations. After analyzing the collected data, it was possible to identify the chief characteristics of these areas.
The text is available by the link (in Russian).
The article of Vadim Volkov «Legal and Extralegal Origins of Sentencing Disparities: Evidence fromRussia’s Criminal Courts» has been published in «Journal of Empirical Legal Studies» (Volume 13, Issue 4, 637-665, December 2016).
Fourth issue, 2016 of the Transnational Dispute Management includes a paper by Dmitriy Skougarevskiy, researcher at the Institute for the Rule of Law (and by his co-author Wolfgang Alschner). This paper is titled «Rule-takers or Rule-makers? A New Look at African Bilateral Investment Treaty Practice».
September, 2016 issue of the Journal of International Economic Law includes a contribution by Dmitriy Skougarevskiy, researcher at the Institute for the Rule of Law. This paper, co-authored with Wolfgang Alschner and titled «Mapping the Universe of International Investment Agreements», explores the diverse landscape of bilateral investment agreements and free trade agreements with investment provisions.
The Journal of World Investment & Trade (Volume 17, Issue 3, pages 339 – 373) includes a co-authored contribution (with Wolfgang Alschner) titled «The New Gold Standard? Empirically Situating the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the Investment Treaty Universe».
