News
55 years on: Time to upgrade UN Rules for treatment of prisoners
The Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners are currently going through a review process which will bring them up to date with modern human rights standards. In an article for IDN – InDepthNews Viewpoints, PRI’s Policy Director, Andrea Huber, explains why this initiative is so important. More about the Standard Minimum Rules review process
News
PRI MENA and the Yemeni Prison Directorate cooperate to protect vulnerable groups and train prison staff
Last week, Taghreed Jaber, Regional Director of PRI’s Middle East and North Africa (PRI MENA) office, and Yemen’s Prisons Director, Major General Mohamed Ali Alzelb, signed an agreement of cooperation for an initiative to protect vulnerable groups in Yemeni prisons and to provide training for Yemeni prison staff. The initiative is part of a wider […]
News
55 years on: modernising the UN Standard Minimum Rules for Treatment of Prisoners
Ahead of an Inter-governmental Expert Group meeting (IEGM) on the Review of the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners in Buenos Aires in December, a summary of outcomes from an independent experts’ meeting held at the University of Essex on 3 and 4 October 2012 on the proposed reform of the Rules […]
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Opinion piece in New York Times highlights devastating impact of solitary confinement on mental health
In her article, The Living Death of Solitary Confinement, Lisa Guenther, an associate professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University (Tennessee), argues it is profoundly harmful for both prisoners and society to isolate people in units where they are neither allowed nor obliged to create and sustain meaningful, supportive relationships with others. The article trails Professor Guenther’s forthcoming book Social […]
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Armenia: PRI’s concerns reflected by UN Human Rights Committee
The United Nations Human Rights Committee held its 105th session in July and has made concluding observations that pre-trial detention is used too frequently, detainees are not informed of their rights or given quick enough access to doctors, lawyers or judges, and that prisons are overcrowded and understaffed. Our submission to the Country Report Task Force […]