Built in 1904, the prison has had only superficial repairs since, though it bulges with four times more prisoners than its designers had envisioned.
Many of the signs inside telling prisoners where to stand, where to sit, where to keep their mouths shut are still in Russian, the native language of much of its staff and most of its inmates.
Riga Central is one of 15 prisons in Latvia being pulled slowly around the corner away from the infamous conditions of Soviet prisons, where inmates were warehoused to keep them away from a society embarrassed by them, toward a European model where the costs and benefits of rehabilitation are constantly at odds.
Through improved prison living conditions, Latvia's director of prisons says the country is slowly making the turn. And human rights activists, who have produced volumes on the horrors of life inside Eastern European prisons, are beginning to agree with him.
"I'm not ready to say prisons here are doing well, but slowly and steadily they are moving ahead," said Angelita Kamenske, director of the prison and police reform program for the Soros Foundation in Latvia.
Just as quickly, however, Kamenske starts producing the statistics that show life inside Latvia's prisons is by no means rosy.
Hundreds of inmates suffer from tuberculosis. Ten died last year from the disease.
Most of Riga Central prisoner's are awaiting trial, some for two or three years, making Latvia's largest prison a catch basin for a slow, leaky judiciary system. Very few receive any education or training inside.
Overcrowding, though a problem in Riga Central, is of less concern throughout the prison system than living conditions. The prison population has decreased, along with Latvia's crime rate, over the last two years.
Most cells in Riga Central are crumbling and damp. Unlike movie prisons, there are no bars, just solid metal doors with a peephole. Until a few years ago a series of tunnels connected the cells, providing prisoners a means of communication and even a way to travel between cells.
The tunnels were filled in a few years ago as part of Latvia's new philosophy toward prisons, and major renovations are for the first time underway in a prison built during the reign of Russian Czar Nicholas II.
When Soviet rule stepped up incarceration, many of the technical buildings were converted to dormitory cells and a prison designed to hold 700 or 800 inmates now houses 2,145.
During the Soviet occupation, the central government administered prisons directly. The money and the orders came from Moscow, creating a void of modern prison philosophy in the early years of Latvian independence.
"It was very difficult to turn the attention of government toward prisons," said Regina Fedosejeva, the prison system's chief physician.
Now prison officials are waiting for the money to back up the government's reforms.
"We have very nice regulations but they are just theoretical not practical," said Vitolds Zahars, Latvia's director of prisons and the man most credited with the country's change in philosophy. "It cannot work that way."
Zahars is rare in Latvia's history of prison directors. He is actually trained in penology and not merely a political appointee. He has visited prisons abroad and can quote liberally from prison texts.
But Zahars says he needs about double his current budget of 14 million lats to finish the renovations he has planned, which includes a new tuberculosis hospital outside Riga.
Latvian prisons currently afford an average of two to three square meters of space per prisoner. Zahars hopes that by 2005 that figure will be much closer to the European standard of seven to nine square meters.
"I am absolutely sure that our standards now are closer to Western standards than Russian standards," said Zahars.
Inside Riga Central, prisoners are spread among the nooks and crannies of a half-dozen brown brick buildings. Some are four to a cell others seven or eight.
Unlike many Western prisons, many inmates are allowed personal belongings in their cells. One cell has a spare corner top bunk converted into a shrine, with crosses and paintings of Jesus Christ cast in light from a naked hanging bulb.
In the next building, half a dozen prisoners or more occupy cells in the prison hospital. Most have tuberculosis as evident by the blood stains on the rough wood floors.
Since crime is normally an urban phenomena, most of the prisoners are Russian, the majority population in Latvia's largest cities.
Most of the prisoners in Riga Central are awaiting trial. Too many, said Kamenske.
"I think it's time to start thinking about how many people Latvia can afford to keep in prison," she said.
Latvia has very few alternatives to prison. Community service and suspended sentences are starting to become more popular, but most of Latvia's judges are hesitant to break a long tradition of imprisonment and use them.
"It's still very much the legacy of Soviet times," Kamenske continued. "There are too many prisoners in this country."
Bail, she said, was used in only two cases last year where charges would warrant prison terms. The year before, another two.
Of the thousands of convictions in Latvia last year, only about 150 cases led to community service.
Besides some personal things, prisoners awaiting trial have the fewest liberties. Most are locked down 23 hours a day and very few are offered education or prison work.
Zahars is familiar with the role of education and work in the concept of rehabilitation, but he says he's doing his best just to make sure prisoners get hot water.
Most of the books lent to prisoners come back with pages missing because of a lack of toilet paper.
"Although I admire Mr. Zahars a lot, I think the emphasis on physical conditions may have been overemphasized," said Kamenske. "Education is so much cheaper than reconstruction."
Eight percent of prisoners are involved in educational programs, she said, and less than a quarter are involved in work programs.
That too will change, Zahars promises. But it will take time and money.
"I know it will work," he said. "But unfortunately in our countries some ministries don't understand our needs."
But perhaps the most pressing future problem facing the country's prison system will be a problem plaguing Western prisons more than Russian prisons. Three inmates died of heroin overdoses last week, including a 25-year-old in Riga Central, the first heroin-related deaths in Latvian prisons.
"All this pleasure has come to us from the West," said Alexander Zarkov, the leather-faced warden of Riga Central. "The biggest problem four years ago was vodka."
If Latvian prisons have precious little money to renovate cells, they have no money or infrastructure in place to deal with heroin, which has swept into the Baltics in recent years.
"It has fallen on us like snow," said Zahars. "It will be our biggest problem."
Prison officials are talking about drug-free areas in prisons where inmates would promise not to use drugs in exchange for special privileges or even a reduced sentence.
But Zahars and others look at the floor when talk turns to treating addicts.
Introducing bleach to clean needles or even needle exchange programs, answers still controversial in most Western countries, are in the early stages of talk.
Kamenske and others hope the rising drug use, which prison officials estimate has more than doubled to over 500 since last year, will not throw a wrench into Latvia's shiny new engine of prison reform.
She believes many top prison and police officials like Zahars are genuinely interested in change.
"The most repressive institutions in the country, the prisons and police, are looking for contacts with non-governmental organizations," she said. "That's not something you see in too many transition countries."
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