The author talks about the years spent as a prisoner, first in a pre-trial detention center, and then in the Tagil correctional colony for former law enforcement officers. The author immerses the reader in a world of lawlessness, where prisoners strive to survive, and the guards strive to squeeze as much out of them as possible. The book consists of documentary essays written on the basis of the author's memoirs. Their heroes are “inmates” with different destinies, characters, with different abilities to survive physically and morally in conditions of total lack of freedom, constant humiliation, hunger, slave labor and separation from relatives. All first and last names have been changed.