The governments of Russia and Kazakhstan, countries that had the most Soviet Gulag camps, have adopted policy papers to drastically reduce their prison populations. The project aims to conduct interviews with those who wrote these papers and have worked to make their goals a reality. We want to work out why and when prison reform emerges on the policy agenda, and what obstacles there are to its successful implementation. This includes continuing poor conditions and abuse, which we will capture through coding reports from international and non-governmental bodies over time.