Editing Butyrka prison (section)

== Living conditions ==

[[Varlam Shalamov]] notes in one of his tales, that the Butyrka is extremely hot in summer; [[Eduard Limonov]], in his [[drama]] ''Death in the Police Van'', emphatically agrees. He says that, with the collapse of the [[Soviet regime]], overcrowding has become a real issue; there are more than one hundred [[inmate]]s in cells meant to contain ten people. In a 2019 interview the [[warden]] of the prison said "The limit of our detention facility is 1,847 inmates. In fact, now when we are talking there are 2,292 people here."<ref>{{cite web |title=Russian Limbo - Butyrka Prison |url=https://cepa.org/article/russian-limbo-butyrka-prison/ |website=CEPA |access-date=7 January 2025 |date=8 December 2020}}</ref> Most of these people are politically unreliable subjects from the [[Caucasus]]. Since epidemics are a problem, the wardens try to fill cells entirely with people with [[AIDS]], or with [[tuberculosis]]; however, this does little to curb the problem, since many inmates are [[User (drug)|drug users]], and there is at most one needle per cell. Moreover, inmates are brought to the tribunal in overcrowded police vans, so that healthy inmates are exposed to tuberculosis.