In 2024, we advocated for not surrendering to simplification, outcry and resignation. We held strong, with rigour, clear-headedness and persistence. In 2025, the issue was direction, and we have stayed on course despite the storm.
The need for our work has never been so apparent, and yet the conditions for performing it have never been so hostile. Even more so than in the past, prisons are becoming places of institutionalised humiliation and daily arbitrariness. This is no longer a gradual downward spiral: it’s an eruption. This inexhaustible violence spits in the face of the rule of law – and the State legitimises it by remaining silent.
Funding has dried up – sometimes by design, in a strategic attempt to dismantle associative movements that represent opposition to power.
Nevertheless, we persist. Because our duty is not only to inform, but also to document. To bear witness. To say that what’s happening, what is not said, what is denied – so that history, later, cannot say that we did not know, that we did not take action.
And to do that, what could be better than making connections? Connections, between the people at Prison Insider who provide information and those who read our work, and those who are imprisoned. In 2025, we also decided to connect with the friends and relatives of incarcerated people in six different countries by sharing their lived experiences in our documentary series, Connecting Stories Beyond Bars.
Prison Insider keeps records, monitors rights, and amplifies voices so they may never be silenced. Because courage means holding on, reinventing oneself, making adjustments – without ever betraying one’s mission. It’s hitting where it hurts, hitting hard, with words, facts, personal accounts, reports, actions and sometimes also messages of hope and of changes to come.
I am addressing this message to you as part of this activity report, which is presented with Florence Laufer, the outgoing Director, after taking over as Director of Prison Insider – with enthusiasm and determination – in January 2026.
