Featured Blog
One week after International Women’s Day, a coalition of organisations and experts convened to address the rising trend of women’s criminalisation driven by poverty in a side event at the 68th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York on 15 March. The event highlighted the intersections of gender, […]
4th April 2024
Featured Blog
Figure 1: Principles of Growth Wheel In this blog written for PRI, the authors Makayla Agyemang and Dr Sarah Lewis from UK-based Penal Reform Solutions, present the “Growth Project” that they have implemented in English prisons to foster rehabilitative relationships between people detained and staff in prison facilities. The project is based on Dr […]
14th February 2024
In July 2023, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights presented its first ever report detailing the scale and situation of women deprived of liberty in the Americas. In this blog, Coletta Youngers considers its findings and their importance for efforts to reduce women’s incarceration across the region. This article was originally published by WOLA (Washington […]
16th August 2023
En julio de 2023, la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos presentó su primer informe sobre la magnitud y la situación de las mujeres privadas de libertad en las Américas. En este blog, Coletta Youngers analiza sus conclusiones y su importancia para los esfuerzos por reducir el encarcelamiento de mujeres en toda la región. Este artículo […]
16th August 2023
As a minority in national prison populations, women are often at a disadvantage compared to men in prison, with few prisons meeting their basic needs or adequately preparing them for release or reintegration. Women have also faced increased hardship during the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of changes to prison regimes that fail to account […]
1st March 2022
Around the world, thousands of children are separated from their mother – often the primary caregiver – when she is sent to prison. In the fifth blog of our series marking the tenth anniversary of the UN Bangkok Rules, Miranda Rathmell, a Prison Officer at HMP Downview in the UK, looks at the complex and […]
21st June 2021
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 the fourth blog of our series marking the tenth anniversary of the UN Bangkok Rules, Laura Ann Douglas examines extreme sentencing of women - what is driving the increase, what impact it has on the women serving these sentences, and how the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide and its partners are working with women who have served extreme sentences to advocate for healing-centered justice.
31st March 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
In this expert blog, Anju Anna John considers menstrual hygiene provision for women in prison and interventions to assess needs, raise awareness of women’s entitlements and best practices, and improve access to sanitary products in places of detention. This is the third blog in PRI’s latest series marking ten years of the UN Bangkok Rules. […]
16th February 2021
The global female prison population continues to rise, partly due to harsh drug policies. In the second blog of our series marking the tenth anniversary of the UN Bangkok Rules, Corina Giacomello presents the findings of research on women and girls who use drugs and are detained in Mexico, and shines a light on those […]
15th December 2020