USA Basketball player, Brittney Griner............

To better understand what day-to-day penal colony life is like and what challenges Griner might face, Yahoo Sports combed reports from human rights groups and government agencies and spoke to attorneys and researchers who have visited inmates in IK-2. They paint a bleak picture of corrupt guards, military-esque rules, exhausting workdays and extreme isolation.

Griner’s first indication of the hardships ahead likely came when she arrived at her penal colony last month and had to surrender her civilian clothes and belongings in exchange for a prison uniform. Experts say prisoners can face discipline if they don’t button their uniforms to the neck and wear headscarves at all times.

Whereas Griner lived in a cell at her pre-trial detention center in the Moscow suburbs, inmates at IK-2 share a communal dormitory with up to 100 other women. Petty thieves sleep alongside drug offenders and murderers. First-time lawbreakers bunk next to hardened recidivists. None of the prisoners is allowed to display any personal items atop their bedside cabinets, not even pictures of their loved ones.

SHE MADE A STUPID MISTAKE BUT DOES THE PUNISHMENT FIT THE CRIME?