Who are we?
The information site on prisons throughout the world
USA: "This is the real Miami"
focus
17 May 2022. "Within two years after leaving the juvenile detention centre, any of these kids who was released with an ankle monitor has been killed, often from a gunshot wound". Richard Ross has been working on incarcerated minors for almost two decades. He is commenting a picture which encapsulates his commitment to this subject.
Ukraine: “prisons are left on their own”
3 questions to...
5 May 2022. Information about prison is not easily accessible, even less during the war. Prison Insider is seeking to update its information about Ukrainian prisons.
Senegal: out of step, outlawed
3 questions to...
5 May 2022. A new bill is looking to toughen punishment for homosexuality. There are serious concerns about detention conditions for LGBTI people. The Free Collective is alarmed by this state of affairs.
They are talking about it
Testimonials
France: in search of meaning
Sakina is a Muslim chaplain in prison. She guides female prisoners in their religious practice. Ramadan, daily organiszation, work on self-esteem… She tells us all about it
Algeria: a month (almost) like any other
Rachid M. was imprisoned in El-Harrach and then Tizi Ouzou between 1996 and 1999. He tells us about conditions in prison, visits and Ramadan.
USA: “the darkness suffocates me at all time”
Britney is incarcerated at Lane Murray Unit, a state prison located in Texas. She tells us how a typical day goes by.
United States: meeting my heroine
Alex and Britney have been corresponding for two years. Alex lives in Austria and Britney is serving time in a Texas prison. This is the story of a friendship between two women living thousands of kilometers apart.Recently
News
Argentina: "The phone is everything to me"
When Paola, 35, heard she and her cellmates would be allowed mobile phones in their prison cell at the start of the global Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, she celebrated ecstatically. “It felt like freedom,” she recalled. “But they were juste cellphones!” After one of her fellow inmates in the Pen…Source — Rest of world
Australia: seen in the press / 2022
Violence, acts of protest, prison conditions, justice reforms: find out what is new about prisons and justice in this country. Prison Insider monitors the press on a regular basis.
Togo resumes prison visits after two-year ban
As in many African countries, family visits are crucial for many detainees as they allow relatives to bring food, clothing and medicine. “Parents of detainees as well as friends, members of NGOs and civil society, are allowed (visits) starting on Friday 22 April,” Justice Minister Pius Kokouvi Agbe…
Liban : Des proches de détenus manifestent devant la prison militaire de Rihanié
This article is not available in English. This article is available in the following versions: French
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Switzerland: walling up madness
Thematic paper
25 April 2022. “In the evening, the shouting starts, and the screams, and the prisoners striking the armoured doors... We prisoners know very well what certain screams mean…”
Read Georges’testimonial in our overview of the situation in Switzerland.
USA: "The darkness suffocates me at all time"
testimonial
22 April 2022. "I can hear some prisoners literally being transformed into monsters because the walls are closing in on them".
Britney is incarcerated at Lane Murray Unit, a state prison located in Texas. She tells us how a typical day goes by.
France: could do better
14 April 2022. " Prisons do not provide treatment, or provide it poorly; most mentally ill people should not be there. Yet, the harsh reality is that many of them are."
As a result of the thematic paper Walling up madness in eight European countries, Unafam is presenting the following perspectives and conclusions.
Switzerland: The role of forensic psychiatric expertise
Interview
7 march 2022. Psychiatric expertise has grown in the last few years, especially in assessing recidivism risk. Can risk really be predicted? Interview.
Fernando Moleres
Sierra Leone
Virginie de Galzain
Madagascar
Carlos Hernandez
Venezuela
Sarah Bones
United States of America
Jérémie Jung
Latvia
Cosmin Bumbut
Romania
Stephen Tourlentes
United States of America
Augustin Le Gall
Tunisia
Fernando Moleres
Sierra Leone
Sebastien van Malleghem
Belgium
Seyi Rhodes, reporter
Haiti
Pierre Duvert
Madagascar
Irina Popova
Belarus
Nathalie Mohadjer
Burundi
Grégoire Korganow
France
Andrew Aitchison
United Kingdom
Breaking the Circle
Minors released from prison have no access to reentry programs. Some go back to the streets and try to survive; others receive support from various organisations.
Prisons of Madagascar
“Overcrowding, the stench of urine as soon as you cross the threshold, rats and vermin everywhere…” Virginie de Galzain
The Franklin Masacre survivors
Carlos Hernandez photographed the men who survived Franklin Masacre’s reign over the General Penitentiary of Venezuela.
Story of Earl Reinhardt
While seeking out a subject for a report on aging detainees, Sarah Bones meets Earl, who has spent the past 50 of his 75 years behind bars.
Pāri mūriem
Behind the walls of the juvenile detention centre of Cēsis, the prisoners are getting bored. Jérémie Jung leads photography workshops with 10 of them but is confronted with censorship by the prison administration.
Camera intimă
Conjugal visits are allowed for prisoners and take place in private rooms, located inside the prison compound. Cosmin Bumbut photographed those places, when they were empty.
Of Lengths and Measures
When nights start to fall, prisons still glow on the outskirts of towns. Stephen Tourlentes unveils the architectural stigma of incarceration.
Cinema in prison
Four Tunisian prisons host screenings at a film festival. Augustin Le Gall, a photojournalist, brings back a sample of the wind of freedom that blew into Borj Erroumi prison.
Waiting for Justice
Children are incarcerated illegally in the maximum security prison of Pademba, in Sierra Leone. Fernando Moleres shares with us the daily lives of the minors in the Prison of Freetown.
Prisons
Being deprived of freedom causes extreme distress. The images by Sebastien van Malleghem denounce the archaic and opaque walls which enclose these men and women and their broken lives.
Forgotten prisoners
Prisoners are waiting. Most of them will never be judged because their files are missing. Many will die.
Seyi Rhodes, reporter, comments on photographs he has taken inside the Port-au-Prince prison.
Captured childhood
More than one million children are imprisonned throughout the world, according to UNICEF. In Madagascar, a large majority of them are yet to be judged.
Pierre Duvert captures their everyday life.
Welcome to LTP
In Belarus, people are locked up to wean them off alcohol. These are strange places where time seems to have stopped after the fall of Soviet Union.
The Dungeon
Children languishing in dark cells. They are victims of alleged arbitrary justice, and they spend years without seeing the inside of a courtroom.
Prisons
From 2011 to 2014, Grégoire Korganow went inside some 20 corrections facilities and photographed everything he saw: inside the cells, courtyard, visitation booths, showers, solitary confinement block, and more, by day and by night.
Prison Stories
The everyday lives of inmates, guards and visitors.
