Blog

How institutional culture and ‘alternative management’ in prisons contribute to torture and ill-treatment

Institutional culture in prisons was the focus of the regional forum hosted by the PRI Office in Tbilisi on 29 April. Representatives of civil society and government from all three South Caucasus republics (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) were attended. The existence of non-statutory, hierarchical relations between inmates was widely discussed. The hierarchy among prisoners often […]

Mushegh Yekmalyan13th May 2013

Institutional culture in detention: a framework for preventive monitoring

Prisons, like any closed institutions or environments, are places where large groups of inmates are often managed by small teams of staff. To keep order and safety, prison management is strictly hierarchical, regulating every aspect of the life of the detainees. In many ways, prisons turn into ‘mini societies’, with their own rules and their […]

Mushegh Yekmalyan30th April 2013

PRI welcomes the revised EU Guidelines on the Death Penalty

PRI’s Death Penalty Programme Manager Jacqueline Macalesher responds to the revised EU Guidelines on the Death Penalty adopted last week, which have made a number of significant improvements to the EU’s policy on the fight against the death penalty. On 22 April, the Foreign Affairs Council adopted new revised and updated EU Guidelines on the […]

Harriet Lowe30th April 2013

Working with the media to raise public awareness of human rights and criminal justice issues in Kazakhstan

Last month former Guardian journalist Malcolm Dean helped to train 25 journalists in Kazakhstan on current issues in criminal justice reform, the current situation in Kazakhstan’s prisons, strategies for good journalism and successful techniques for bringing criminal justice and human rights to public attention. It came as a shock to learn that only a few […]

Malcolm Dean4th April 2013

Probation and electronic bracelets instead of prison

Alison Hannah, PRI’s Executive Director, reports from Kazakhstan where PRI’s Central Asia office held their first Prison Forum event last week to discuss probation and electronic monitoring. The aim of the conference was to share experience and plans for the expansion of the probation service in Kazakhstan and the introduction of electronic monitoring for offenders. […]

Alison Hannah4th April 2013

Sahyog De-addiction Centre: holistic rehabilitation for Delhi’s children in contact with the law

Jo Honeybone reports from a vist to the Sahyog De-addiction Centre in Delhi where since it was founded in 2011, 300 children from 8 to 18 years have come for rehabilitation and vocational training. On 16th April, 15 participants attending the International Colloquium on Juvenile Justice in Delhi, India, visited the ‘Sahyog De-addiction Centre’ managed […]

Joanne Honeybone27th March 2013

Challenges and promising initiatives for improving conditions for women offenders in the East Asia-Pacific Region

PRI’s Executive Director, Alison Hannah, reports from a meeting in Thailand last week on the implementation of the Bangkok Rules in East Asia and the Pacific, where participants heard about a range of promising rehabilitative initiatives, as well as exchanging information and views on the many similar challenges women in conflict with the law face […]

Alison Hannah1st March 2013

Ten African solutions to the problem of prison overcrowding in Africa

From mobile courts to review remand cases to using traditional community courts to deal with minor offences, African countries are finding innovative ways to help solve the problem of prison overcrowding. PRI’s Nikhil Roy and Becky Randel select 10 examples of good practice which emerged from a PRI training course in Mozambique last week. On […]

Nikhil Roy25th February 2013

At the United Nations: the importance of NGOs

With the 22nd session of the Human Rights Council starting in Geneva today, the importance of protecting the valuable role of NGOs in international policy-making and ensuring the safety of human rights defenders is receiving a lot of attention. PRI’s programme officer, Olivia Rope, who made her first advocacy trip for PRI to Geneva last week, […]

Olivia Rope25th February 2013

Popular as a victim, forgotten as a defendant

PRI’s Policy Director, Andrea Huber and Programme Officer, Olivia Rope, report from the half-day of discussion of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination of Women (CEDAW) on women’s access to justice.  PRI’s activities at the United Nations this year kicked off with the half-day of discussion of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination of Women […]

Olivia Rope18th February 2013