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
Social franchises are increasingly being used and recognised as a tool to quickly and effectively create sustainable impact. But their potential to support probation and reintegration of former prisoners has not yet been fully explored. We take a look at what social franchises, penal systems and sanitary towels have in common. “In several African countries […]
8th May 2017
In this guest blog, Sabrina Mahtani, co-founder of the Sierra Leonean NGO, AdvocAid, writes about a woman who was sentenced to death in 2010 when she was 17 for killing her abusive former boyfriend. Her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2011 and although her appeal was heard in 2014 – 2015 she has still not received a […]
21st March 2017
In 2014, PRI embarked on an innovative two-year pilot project in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to improve access to justice by targeting the development of community service systems as an alternative to the overuse of imprisonment, funded by UKAID. Omar Phoenix Khan, who led on the project, shares his reflections now the final evaluation is […]
23rd November 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
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
On 10 March 2016, PRI’s new Africa Office held a round table discussion in Kampala, Uganda on the implementation of the Revised UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules). Omar Phoenix Khan, Project Coordinator EXTRA (Excellence in Training on Rehabilitation in Africa) Project Coordinator attended the discussions, along with PRI’s Executive Director, Alison Hannah and […]
11th April 2016