Robert Parsons reports from a prison breeding disease in its inmates

Democracy has come to Russia - or so we are often led to believe. Innocent people are no longer herded in their millions into cattle trucks and dispatched into the oblivion of Siberia's icy wastes.

Human rights abuse is no longer the dark stain on Russia's reputation it once was, but not everything is well here yet.

More than one million people languish in prisons that have changed little since the 1930s. It is a shameful world record. The state still puts away more than 15 times as many offenders as most European countries, and mostly for petty crimes.

Even short sentences, as I discovered on a visit to a prison in Kaluga 200km south of Moscow, can amount to a death sentence.

A killer is on the loose in Russia's legal system. Tuberculosis is scything through the prison population.

The statistics are terrifying - 100,000 prisoners have TB, that is 10% of the total number of inmates, and 30,000 of them have an untreatable and deadly form.

One man I spoke to has it - and his offence was to steal two bags of barley.

Torture and beatings

It is still the case that when you enter the Russian penal system you wave goodbye to your human rights.

Torture, beatings and forced confessions are commonplace. It is even reported that riot police have been allowed to practice on convicts.

Stocks of drugs are severely limited

The failure to protect the prisoners from TB is a symptom of a system that hardly treats its charges as human beings.

Living conditions are appalling and there is little pretence of hygiene. Inmates are crammed into crowded cells, the food is foul and inadequate. Stress levels are damagingly high. Immune systems are overloaded.

No medicine, more misery

Part of the problem is that the penal structures are catastrophically under funded.

The authorities cannot possibly afford to treat TB patients with a full course of drugs. The prisons receive only 20% of the anti-TB preparations that they need.

As a consequence the disease is mutating into its new resistant form. It is estimated that the penal system releases 10,000 TB uncured sufferers into the community every year.

Many of them have the drug-resistant form of the disease. Getting treatment can be well-nigh impossible.

A man I met was released from prison in September yet the Moscow health service refuses to treat him because he is not registered in the city. For the same reason he, along with thousands of others, is forced to live homeless.

This is a human rights issue that directly concerns the rest of the world.

Russia's problem is our problem. Tuberculosis recognises no borders and, even if the will were there, Russia itself would be powerless to combat the threat. Beset by financial crisis it simply does not have the resources.