PRI at 12th UN Crime Congress in Brazil 12-19 April 2010
The Twelfth United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice closed in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, on 19 April 2010 with the adoption of the Salvador Declaration which calls on Member States to adapt their criminal justice systems to a changing world.
In the Declaration, Member States underline the need to respect and protect human rights in preventing crime and administering criminal justice. The Congress devoted two whole days to sharing good practice in the management of prisons and treatment of prisoners, and to ways of avoiding the overuse of imprisonment and resulting overcrowding. A great deal of attention was paid to vulnerable groups such as children and youth, women, migrants and those suffering from addiction to drugs, and to the challenges in many countries of huge and speedy urbanisation. The Declaration calls on Member States to improve prison conditions and the treatment of prisoners, to seek alternatives to imprisonment and to reduce the number of prisoners in pretrial detention.
The new UN rules for the treatment of women prisoners and non-custodial measures for women offenders were welcomed and will be further discussed at the forthcoming Crime Commission, along with the other issues covered by the Declaration. The Declaration recognizes the importance of rehabilitating and reintegrating young offenders into society as well as the importance of addressing the needs of the children of prisoners. It also recommends that Member States endeavour to reduce pretrial detention and promote access to legal defence mechanisms.
Penal Reform International was represented at the Congress by Policy Director Mary Murphy, Board Member (Chile) Maria Eugenia Hofer, and Moscow Regional Director Viktoria Sergeyeva.
PRI made its main statement in the Workshop on Strategies and Best Practices against Overcrowding in Correctional Facilities. The statement urges progress on measures which would reduce the overuse of imprisonment including the adoption of supplementary UN rules on the treatment of women, improving the situation of children and vulnerable prisoners, upper limits on the number of detainees in prison facilities, the use of paralegals, and more humane strategies for the treatment of prisoners following abolition of the death penalty.
PRI was also a platform speaker at the Workshop on UN and Other Best Practices in the Treatment of Prisoners in the Criminal Justice System, speaking on ‘Communication strategies to create a better understanding of what prison can (and can’t) do for society and under what circumstances.’
PRI is shortly publishing its Handbook for Law and Policy Makers and this was introduced and discussed by a multinational audience at a dedicated ancillary meeting.
Policy Director Mary Murphy said the concerns of PRI had chimed with the concerns of a large number of attendees. Important ideas circulating at the Congress included the draft supplementary Standard Minimum Rules on women, a complete amendment of the UN Standard Minimum Rules which were adopted in 1955 and a proposal to create a UN Convention on the Rights of Detainees as one way of ensuring that other important rights of prisoners are not arbitrarily denied when they are deprived of their right to liberty.
According to the Policy Director: “A distinct message from the Congress was that civil society is not just important but essential for criminal justice reform and crime prevention, that it can be usefully involved in a huge variety of ways, in prison and outside, and that addressing and preventing crime requires a holistic approach which includes social action, not just punishment and pursuit.”
Oral Statement on behalf of members of the Interagency Panel on Juvenile Justice (IPJJ)
