In April 2016, the National Penitentiary Institute of Peru (INPE) approved a resolution to adopt and implement a new Protocol for the treatment of women prisoners based on the UN Bangkok Rules, one of the first countries to have done so. Maria Eva Dorigo, an independent researcher who worked with the INPE on the Protocol, explains its significance. […]
5th August 2016
Filming live court cases might make justice come to life, but do television cameras in a court room make our justice systems more transparent or improve public understanding of legal proceedings? Dr Ruth Herz, German judge and now visiting professor at Birkbeck School of Law, University of London, took on the role of a ‘TV judge’ […]
27th July 2016
On 22 June it will be ten years since OPCAT – the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture – entered into force. In this expert blog for PRI, Professor Rachel Murray, Director of the Human Rights Implementation Centre at the University of Bristol (UK) asks what impact the treaty has had a decade […]
22nd June 2016
Last week at the UN Crime Commission, delegates and experts gathered at a side-event to discuss how to address the HIV epidemic in prisons. The panel all agreed – to achieve the target under Goal 3 of the Sustainable Development Agenda to end the HIV epidemic by 2030 – strong support (including political will and financial […]
2nd June 2016
Migration across borders is changing our prison populations. Lucy Slade has previously worked as a resettlement mentor manager and has volunteered in London prisons where a large proportion of inmates come from outside the UK. At Lucy’s local prison, HMP Wandsworth, around half of the prison’s 1,600 men are foreign, representing over 70 different countries. […]
27th May 2016
Security, prisoner welfare and successful rehabilitation depend to a large degree on well trained prison staff. However, in many countries, the job is low status, badly paid, and recruits receive little training. Prison staffing is the subject of a special feature in PRI’s new Global Prison Trends report. Rob Allen sets out the main points for consideration […]
26th May 2016
Rob Allen highlights some of the findings from the 2016 edition of PRI’s Global Prison Trends. With prison reform the centrepiece of the UK government’s legislative programme over the next year, a timely new report from Penal Reform International (PRI) provides an international context in which to consider the plans for England and Wales. Global Prison […]
24th May 2016
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
Harm Reduction International has published a new tool for use by prison monitoring mechanisms (national, regional and international) to monitor the management of communicable diseases and harm reduction in prisons and prevent human rights violations in this context. Gen Sander, Human Rights Analyst at Harm Reduction International, introduces the tool here. Last October, I wrote […]
11th May 2016
PRI’s Policy Director, Andrea Huber, describes, how a pilot research project in Kenya is paving the way for community service and probation orders more sensitive to the needs of women offenders. ‘So, Kenya is a bit of a guinea pig?’ says our partner from Kenyan Probation Service jokingly, when I described our pilot project on women […]
10th May 2016