Featured Blog
In this blog, PRI’s Executive Director Olivia Rope reflects on the urgent need for meaningful prison reform, drawing on her recent participation at the United Nations General Assembly session marking ten years of the Nelson Mandela Rules.
25th June 2025
Featured Blog
In this expert blog for Penal Reform International, Dr Marion Vannier and Dr Helen Gair from the University of Manchester explore how hope is imagined, experienced and transformed within the context of life imprisonment.
5th June 2025
In a context of climate crisis and rising costs, prisons, like all institutions, must take action to be more sustainable and minimise impact on the environment. In this blog, Wiep Fokker from Restorative Justice Netherlands makes the case for nature-based detention houses as an ecologically sustainable model for penal reform. The climate and biodiversity crisis […]
24th October 2023
The prevalence of mental health conditions among individuals in contact with criminal justice systems is disproportionately high, when compared to the general population. Reductions in community mental health services, coupled with limited capacities within prison and probation services make the provision of mental health support to individuals under supervision a major challenge. In this blog […]
31st January 2023
Global Prison Trends 2022 highlighted severe staffing shortages in prisons and challenges shared across prison systems worldwide in maintaining adequate staffing levels. In the latest blog of our series examining trends identified in the report, Ella Töyrylä, a former prison officer in England, considers the importance of training provided for prison officers for staff retention, […]
23rd November 2022
Global Prison Trends 2022 puso de manifiesto un cambio en el consenso internacional hacia las prisiones basadas en la rehabilitación, pero una disparidad significativa entre los países en cuanto a los recursos y la disponibilidad de programas de rehabilitación. En el tercer blog de nuestra serie que examina las tendencias identificadas en el informe, Eduardo […]
2nd September 2022
Global Prison Trends 2022 highlighted a shift in international consensus to rehabilitative-based prisons, but a significant disparity between countries in the resourcing and availability of rehabilitation programming. In the third blog of our series examining trends identified in the report, Eduardo “Coco” Oderigo presents Fundación Espartanos – a programme providing sport, spirituality and education to […]
23rd August 2022
In this blog Olivia Rope, Executive Director of Penal Reform International, gives a summary and highlights a few key points from the recently published ‘Common position on incarceration’ from the United Nations System. For the first time, the United Nations system has issued a common position on incarceration which was unveiled at an event on […]
11th June 2021
In this blog, Jérôme Mangelinckx considers the drivers and implications of the growing female prison population in Peru, examining the overuse of detention for those awaiting trial, and how to move towards greater use of non-custodial alternatives to detention. 2020 marked the tenth anniversary of the United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners […]
26th April 2021
In this blog, Olivia Rope, Executive Director for Penal Reform International and Vice-Chair of the Alliance of NGOs on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice gives her top five takeaways from the Kyoto Declaration which was adopted as the outcome of the 14th UN Crime Congress.
30th March 2021
This expert blog by human rights expert and commentator, Vicki Prais, examines the issues faced by people in prison without proof of legal identity. Vicki explains how the absence of ID can in itself lead to detention for some people, and also causes a range of problems for those detained or leaving prison impacting on […]
9th October 2020
The European Prison Rules (and their Commentary) were recently revised by the Council of Europe. The most notable changes arguably concern the rules guiding prison authorities on the separation and solitary confinement of prisoners. This comes at a time where separation has become more commonplace with COVID-19 restrictions in place. The practice of solitary confinement […]
10th July 2020