Journalist and human rights activist Eva Merkacheva has visited all seven Russian colonies for life sentenced prisoners - where no one wants to be of their own free will. She interviewed the staff of the colonies and the prisoners and told in her book honestly and without embellishment everything that she managed to see and learn. The author described in detail the daily routine in the colonies, the life of prisoners, themselves and how prisons change people, the awareness of the gravity of the crimes committed and the fact that they will not be released until the end of their lives. Eva Merkacheva talked with killers, maniacs, pedophiles and other criminals who committed acts so terrible that society chose to permanently exclude them from their lives. She tried to understand what drove them, once completely normal, to crime, what made them monsters in human form; whether they repent or, on the contrary, regret that they cannot continue to do evil.