Featured Blog
The blog argues that pandemic preparedness is fundamentally a governance issue, showing how the suspension of independent monitoring during the crisis delayed detection of harm and weakened accountability.
21st July 2026
In this blog, Gustav Tallving, Executive Director of EuroPris, explores a key issue affecting prison systems across Europe and beyond: the role and challenges faced by prison staff.
6th November 2025
In this expert blog, PRI’s Tinatin Uplisashvili explores the persistence of informal prison hierarchies across post-Soviet penitentiary systems, structures that continue to shape prison life through violence, social exclusion and informal authority. Drawing on recent reports by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and long-standing documentation from multiple countries, the blog analyses how […]
22nd July 2025
En español. The coronavirus pandemic has brought a whole host of responses by prisons and wider justice systems, but the plight of women has been neglected or overtly disregarded. Without a gender-specific assessment and response to coronavirus, lives of women in criminal justice systems are at risk and human rights violations will continue. This expert […]
4th June 2020
In this blog to mark International Women’s Day celebrated on Sunday 8 March 2020, Penal Reform International’s Executive Director, Florian Irminger, reflects on the reasons for women who find themselves in prisons from Central African Republic to Costa Rica.
10th March 2020
“It all started with a meeting…” 30 years ago, Vivien Stern, Ahmed Othmani and Hans Tulkens created Penal Reform International. They had in common the belief we still cherish, as stated by Nelson Mandela: “No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails”. In other words, the health of criminal justice […]
21st November 2019
Heather McGill, a researcher currently working on Central Asia for Amnesty International, discusses her recent report on prisoner transportation in Russia, which was launched in October 2017. Prisoners are always at greater risk during transportation, but prison transportation in Russia is in a league of its own. The size of the country combined with the […]
28th November 2017
Today, the fourth edition of the World Female Imprisonment List is published by the Institute for Criminal Policy Research (ICPR). Catherine Heard, Director of the ICPR’s World Prison Research Programme, discusses the latest data. This week at ICPR we release the most comprehensive global dataset ever produced on women prisoner numbers. The fourth edition of […]
9th November 2017
On Nelson Mandela International Day – the second since the UN agreed the revised set of Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, known as the Nelson Mandela Rules – Peter Clarke, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, explains how HMI Prisons has incorporated the Rules into their latest edition of Expectations, which sets out the detailed criteria used to inspect […]
18th July 2017
Pavel Bém is former Mayor of Prague and a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, Czech Republic. Here he gives his assessment of April’s UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the world drug problem. The United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on “the world drug problem” was an important moment for the international […]
18th May 2016
The UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs (UNGASS) took place New York on 19-21 April. Javier Sagredo is Regional Democratic Governance and Citizen Security Advisor for Latin America and the Caribbean for the UN Development Programme (UNDP). In this expert blog for PRI, he examines whether the outcomes of this UNGASS meeting, as well […]
4th May 2016