Facilities
Prison: a five-star hotel?
Analysis
Europe
Material conditions
Facilities
Overcrowding
Activities
Social ties
Work
Are prisons actually luxury hotels? In the first episode of our fact-checking series, Prison Insider responds by drawing on the daily reality of life in prisons.
What prison is not
Thematic paper
Access to legal rights
Discipline
Health
Mental health
Material conditions
Facilities
Overcrowding
Violence
Activities
Alternatives
Work
Overcrowded facilities or incarcerated people “treated too well”, systemic violence or “five-star prisons”: what do the facts actually say? Find out via four fact-checking articles to combat disinformation on detention conditions.
North America
Facilities
United States
Donald Trump has doubled down on his proposal to reopen and expand Alcatraz, the once-notorious prison island in the icy waters of San Francisco Bay. Alcatraz - popularly known as “the Rock” - has not been used as a prison for decades. It is now a historic landmark visited by millions of tourists.
India: congested jails in Kerala's Ernakulam raise concerns as hunt for new prison site drags on
News
Asia
Drugs
Facilities
Overcrowding
India
The wait for a new sub-jail in the district continues even as overcrowding in existing prisons becomes a growing concern. Though the district administration sanctioned land in Puthuvype for the project last year, the plot was later deemed unfit for construction.
Europe
Facilities
Overcrowding
Alternatives
United Kingdom
The site, described by critics as a ‘megaprison,’ is equipped with solar panels and heat pump technology and is the first prison of this kind in the UK. It is one of Britain’s biggest prisons, and is part of a plan to tackle the serious overcrowding.
Asia
Health
Material conditions
Facilities
Protest
Overcrowding
Alternatives
Indonesia
President Prabowo Subianto’s pledge to construct a remote island prison for corrupt officials has been met with scepticism from experts, who argued that deeper structural reforms of the prison system were needed to address chronic overcrowding and underfunding.
Crises
Europe
Material conditions
Facilities
Overcrowding
Ireland
Prison overcrowding is at another crisis point with all secure jails having reached, or exceeded, capacity for the first time. The number of incarcerated male in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, has this week grown to 1,000 for the first time.
Women
Europe
Facilities
Overcrowding
Ireland
The women’s wing of Limerick Prison is currently operating at twice its capacity. That’s according to the Irish Prison Service’s latest figures, which show that the women’s wing is housing 91 incarcerated people, despite having a maximum capacity of just 56 beds.
Türkiye: broken spirits
Testimonial
Europe
Material conditions
Facilities
Overcrowding
Turkey
As the Turkish government’s oppression has been intensifying, the number of incarcerated people has increased by 50,000 in the last six months in the country.
North America
Facilities
Rehabilitation
United States
The Bellingham Reentry Center has been serving as a transition house for incarcerated people finishing up the last bit of their prison sentence since 1976, and since 1981 at its Garden Street address. The facility is the only reentry center north of Seattle.
Europe
Justice
Health
Material conditions
Facilities
Overcrowding
United Kingdom
The governor of Barlinnie says he would “struggle” to survive life inside his own overcrowded prison. Michael Stoney described Scotland’s largest jail as a “pressure cooker” and said new early release laws were necessary for staff and incarcerated people.
Oceania
Mental health
Facilities
Rehabilitation
New Zealand
Prisons are not colourful places. Typically, they are grey or some variation of a monochrome colour scheme. But increasingly, such a limited palette is being questioned for its impact on health and rehabilitation.
Crises
Oceania
Justice
Facilities
Overcrowding
Alternatives
Australia
Incarceration is a “common sense” policy, despite fuelling cycles of intergenerational poverty, trauma, social exclusion and criminalisation. Instead of governments racing to incarcerate, they could be investing in the social support systems that are needed to curb the prison crisis.
Central America and the Caribbean
Access to legal rights
Justice
Material conditions
Facilities
Overcrowding
Social ties
Jamaica
Tesha Miller, the alleged leader of the Clansman Gang, is among 16 imprisoned people suing the Government over conditions at the Tower Street Adult Correctional Centre, the country’s main prison.
Crises
Middle East
Material conditions
Facilities
Overcrowding
Death penalty
Torture
Social ties
Syria
From the Raid Department that falls under the Military Security’s Branch 215—commonly referred to as the “Branch of Death”— Asharq Al-Awsat began its tour of the prisons of the ousted Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.
Oceania
Access to legal rights
Mental health
Facilities
Overcrowding
Australia
The Northern Territory’s Anti-Discrimination Commissioner has warned the government could be at risk of breaching an international human rights agreement on torture after closing a specialised facility for mentally ill and disabled imprisoned people.
Women
Europe
Facilities
Overcrowding
United Kingdom
Some prisons were still full even after the Government’s SDS40 early release scheme saw around 3,000 imprisoned people go home before their release dates, according to Ministry of Justice data.
Crises
Asia
Access to legal rights
Health
Material conditions
Facilities
Torture
Social ties
Russia
What was once a detention centre for juveniles and women with children, Detention Centre No. 2, or SIZO-2, in Taganrog has for over two and a half years been used to detain captured Ukrainians. The facility has become notorious for inhumane conditions.