In many countries around the world, the number of older people in prison is growing fast. In the fifth expert blog in our anniversary series, Bridget Sleap, Senior Rights Policy Adviser at HelpAge International, outlines some of the challenges that older prisoners face in prisons, which – whether in terms of their lay-out, regime, healthcare […]
25th September 2014
In the third blog of our anniversary series, Marayca Lopez i Ferrer, Senior Corrections Analyst and Planner at US firm CGL/Ricci Greene Associates, explores how forward-thinking architects are moving away from classical models of prison architecture – high perimeter razor-wire topped fences, gloomy undersized concrete cells along narrow corridors – to experiment with innovative spatial concepts […]
24th July 2014
In the second blog in our anniversary series, Dr Shane Bryans, a former UK prison governor and criminal justice expert, who has worked on prison-based de-radicalisation programmes in a number of countries, examines how prison administrations can manage violent extremist offenders. Countries on every continent are facing the challenge of managing Violent Extremist Offenders (VEOs) within their prison systems. Preventing them […]
25th June 2014
PRI’s Executive Director reports from a meeting organised by the Open Society Foundations to discuss how the US can support interventions to improve prison conditions in developing countries. It’s a few years now since PRI had to close its small office in the U.S. when funding ran out, and since then it’s been more difficult […]
11th June 2014
PRI’s Policy Director, Andrea Huber, looks at the some of the major trends – national, international, the good, the bad and the ugly – in criminal justice and penal policy over the last few years. This blog was first published by the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex. If there is a criminal […]
11th June 2014
In the first of our expert blog series in our 25th anniversary year, Rob Allen, penal reform expert and co-author of a recent World Bank paper on public-private partnerships in prisons, surveys the arguments and existing evidence in favour of and against the involvement of private companies in prison services. When PRI was founded in […]
23rd May 2014
An important step towards a revised set of the 1955 UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners as described by PRI’s Policy Director, Andrea Huber and Programme Officer, Olivia Rope who attended the third Expert Group Meeting on the revision process in Vienna last week. Last week Penal Reform International attended the 3rd Intergovernmental […]
1st April 2014
This week, PRI’s Policy Director, Andrea Huber, attended an international conference in Hong Kong and visited Lo Wu Correctional Institution, a newly built women’s prison near the border with the Chinese mainland. Participants were very complimentary about the international conference organised by Dui Hua Foundation, in cooperation with Hong Kong University and Renmin University in […]
4th March 2014
Every day about 20 news stories pop in my email inbox, giving the latest headlines from around the world on prison and penal issues. Over the past couple of days, these include: ‘Epidemic of self-mutilation’ in women’s prisons in England and Wales’ ‘Inmates need needle-exchange programs and better access to HIV treatment: study’ (Canada) ‘Anti-torture […]
18th December 2013
Today – Human Rights Day (10 December 2013) – is a chance for organisations around the world to draw attention to both the continuing violations of peoples’ rights and the positive steps being made in protecting and respecting them. So it is appropriate that today PRI is in Kolkata, India, conducting a training of trainers’ workshop […]
10th December 2013