Photo of Sir Nigel Rodley with PRI and other delegates at the Intergovernmental Expert Group on the revision of the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners in Cape Town, 2015. Penal Reform International is deeply saddened to hear of the loss of Professor Sir Nigel Rodley, a founding member of the organisation, after he passed […]
Public Health England (PHE), in partnership with the World Health Organization Health in Prisons Programme (WHO HIPP), held its fourth annual international Health and Justice Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark from 3-4 November 2016. A meeting report of the conference is now available. The main aim of the conference was to share good practice on prison […]
Between 13 and 15 September, PRI’s Central Asia office hosted an International Symposium on the prevention of violence against children in closed institutions in Central Asia in Astana, Kazakhstan. Around two hundred delegates attended from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – penitentiary staff, judicial personnel, police, representatives from various child rights organisations (state and NGOs), as […]
Public Monitoring Committees from 13 regions – the highest number so far – have published a joint report detailing the results of 500 monitoring visits to penitentiary institutions in Kazakhstan. Over the past 10 years, Kazakhstan has delivered a number of important reforms to the criminal justice system. The introduction of a new Criminal Code and Criminal […]
At the end of June, PRI’s new Africa Office welcomed Directors or Probation and Community Service from all over the East African region to Kampala for the PRI’s ExTRA Project End-term Evaluation meeting. The project has focussed on community service as an alternative to imprisonment for petty offences and is now complete after two years of […]
Today is Nelson Mandela International Day, the first since the UN unanimously agreed a revised set of Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners and decided the standards would be known as the ‘Nelson Mandela Rules’ to honour the legacy of the late South African President, a prisoner himself for 27 years and a committed advocate for […]
At the end of June, PRI Central Asia and the Penal Committee, Ministry of Interior, Kazakhstan, supported by the US embassy, jointly organised a roundtable to discuss strategies for preventing radicalisation in prisons. Data shows that the number of those convicted of violent extremist and terrorist crimes is growing everywhere. In Kazakhstan, currently more than 120 […]
At an event organised on the side-lines of the 32nd Human Rights Council, the various human rights issues faced by women in conflict with the law were addressed by a panel of experts from member states, UN bodies and Penal Reform International. The Ambassador of Denmark, Carsten Steur, noted in his opening remarks that while […]
The UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice will convene in Vienna on 23-27 May 2016. Held annually it is the principal policy-making body of the UN in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice and is therefore of key relevance to PRI’s mission. The Commission is the preparatory body for and implements many […]
On 7-8 April 2016, PRI and the University of Essex Human Rights Centre hosted a meeting of criminal justice experts to review the revised UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, adopted as the Nelson Mandela Rules in December 2015. The experts identified legal, policy and operational issues that may arise for prison […]