La epidemia de Covid-19 ha provocado una variedad de respuestas por parte de los sistemas penitenciarios y de justicia, pero en general la difícil situación de las mujeres ha sido pasada por alto o directamente ignorada. Si no se producen evaluaciones y respuestas al coronavirus que contengan un perspectiva de género específica, la vida de […]
27th July 2020
In recent decades technological innovation has provided many opportunities for supporting prison management and the rehabilitation of people in prison. As documented in Global Prison Trends 2020, video visitation systems, remote court hearings and electronic file management systems are well established in some and becoming more common in some regions’ prisons, namely in Europe, North […]
17th July 2020
In this blog, as we publish a new briefing on coronavirus and criminal justice systems, Penal Reform International’s Executive Director, Florian Irminger, reflects on measures taken in response to the pandemic and what needs to be done - now and in the longer term - to prevent harm and human rights violations.
14th July 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
In this blog, Justice Imman Ali, a judge of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh and a member of PRI’s Board explains how they managed to release 20,938 adults from pre-trial detention in 10 working days and 343 children from custody in the space of 7 working days as part of the response to the COVID-19 […]
11th June 2020
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 external expert blog for PRI, Giorgi Burjanadze, Deputy Ombudsperson in Georgia and member of the National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) mandated to conduct the monitoring of detention facilities, shares how they adapted its methodology to continue its critical work during the Covid-19 pandemic.
1st June 2020
In this expert blog for PRI, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ilze Brands Kehris says COVID-19 has exposed the urgent need for long-term societal and institutional reform and that human rights must be front and centre of the global response to the pandemic. This blog draws on the remarks made by the Assistant-Secretary General at the launch of Global Prison Trends 2020.
11th May 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
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights published a report in September 2019 on the administration of justice and human rights analysing violence, death, and serious injury in situations of deprivation of liberty. In this blog, Aldyen Krieger, PRI’s Policy Intern, evaluates the primary drivers behind the high exposure to violence and increased mortality […]
18th November 2019