Justice
Women bearing the weight of the law
Analysis
Africa
North America
Central America and the Caribbean
South America
Women
Asia
Europe
LGBTQI
Oceania
Access to legal rights
Justice
Drugs
Death penalty
Violence
More and more women across the world are being imprisoned, mostly for minor, non-violent offences. What discriminatory and punitive logic is being applied? What is being done to fight back against it?
Women
Asia
Minors
Foreign prisoners
Access to legal rights
Justice
Health
Mental health
Material conditions
Pakistan
Punjab Home Department has taken a commendable step by amending the 125-year-old prison rules under the vision of Punjab’s chief minister for comprehensive jail reforms. According to the spokesperson, in the first phase, 138 jail rules were revised to meet modern standards.
United Kingdom: ‘I stole a mobile phone almost 20 years ago – I’ve spent half my life in prison’
News
Europe
Long-term prisoners
Justice
Mental health
Suicide
Violence
United Kingdom
A father who stole a mobile phone when he was in the grips of a drug addiction is still languishing in prison almost 20 years later under an “inhumane” indefinite jail term.
Europe
Justice
Health
Mental health
Suicide
Overcrowding
United Kingdom
Four in ten incarcerated people who took their own lives in custody were denied adequate healthcare before their deaths, according to damning new figures exposing the scale of neglect inside Britain’s overcrowded prisons.
North America
Justice
Health
Mental health
United States
Lawyers for 25,000 people incarcerated in Arizona have asked a judge to take over health care operations in state-run prisons and appoint an official to run them, saying the state is not capable of fixing deep failures in care even though it has been required to do so over the last decade.
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.
Europe
Long-term prisoners
Access to legal rights
Justice
Mental health
Suicide
Alternatives
United Kingdom
A United Nations torture tsar has said British incarcerated people trapped on indefinite jail terms are probably “being detained arbitrarily” after The Independent revealed six in 10 are being blocked from moving to open jails.
North America
LGBTQI
Justice
Mental health
Material conditions
United States
A Bureau of Prisons policy that called on transgender women in federal prisons to hand over any female-identifying clothing and other commissary items, like women’s razors and hair care, is on hold at at least one federal prison in Texas.
Europe
Justice
Material conditions
Overcrowding
Violence
United Kingdom
Complaints to the ombudsman in the year ending March 2024 - a period during which the Tories freed thousands of incarcerated people early to avoid running out of space—hit 4,575, the highest number since before the pandemic.
Women
Europe
Foreign prisoners
Justice
Health
Drugs
Material conditions
Suicide
Violence
Malta
Alex Dalli’s prison degraded incarcerated people and subjected them to pervasive intimidation and fear, with one person describing the place as a ‘factory of evil’, a new Ombudsman investigation has found.
North America
LGBTQI
Justice
Health
Violence
United States
Three incarcerated transgender women sued the Trump administration, alleging that the president’s executive order directing government officials to move them to men’s prisons and cut off their access to health care violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law.
North America
LGBTQI
Justice
Health
Mental health
Violence
United States
A federal judge temporarily blocked prison officials from moving a transgender woman to a men’s prison and cutting off her access to gender-affirming care.
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.
North America
Access to legal rights
Justice
Violence
United States
State Sen. Julia C. Salazar has proposed a series of bills that seek to make it easier to discipline or fire correction officers who are found to have engaged in misconduct, including using excessive force, as well as to provide greater independent oversight of state prisons.
United States: incarcerated firefighters battle L.A. blazes while California upholds prison slavery
News
Crises
North America
Justice
Health
Alternatives
Rehabilitation
Work
United States
Last fall, California voters rejected Proposition 6, which would have brought an end to modern-day slavery in the state’s prisons. Not even three months later, more than 1,000 incarcerated Californians stood on the front lines of the fires blazing through LA, risking their lives for minuscule pay.
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.
North America
Justice
Death penalty
Violence
United States
Attorneys for an Alabama incarcerated person scheduled to be the fourth person put to death with nitrogen gas asked a federal judge to block the execution, arguing that the first three incarcerated people showed signs of suffering from suffocation as the gas flowed.
Crises
Middle East
Access to legal rights
Justice
Violence
Israel
Currently, around 6,800 Palestinians are being held by Israel without standard trials, according to numbers provided by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) and Hamoked.
Culture
Europe
Justice
Health
Mental health
Material conditions
Overcrowding
Activities
Social ties
Alternatives
Rehabilitation
In Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland, life in prison resembles the outside world as much as possible. However, like any prison system, they aren’t perfect. Nordic prisons are facing some of the same challenges as prisons in the UK.
Europe
Long-term prisoners
Access to legal rights
Justice
Torture
United Kingdom
An incarcerated person who brought a legal challenge in April 2023 alleging he had been held in solitary confinement in England for more than two years has said he remains in isolation 20 months later because the judge has not given her decision in the case.
Africa
Justice
Death penalty
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe has officially abolished the death penalty following the enactment of a new law signed by President Emmerson Mnangagwa. Published on Tuesday, December 31, the legislation prohibits courts from issuing capital punishment sentences and commutes all existing death sentences to prison terms.