News
Women
Middle East
Health
Material conditions
Iran
Varisheh Moradi, a political prisoner serving her sentence in Tehran’s Evin Prison, has begun a hunger strike to protest the death sentences handed to female activists in Iran. Moradi, imprisoned in the women’s ward of Evin, started the hunger strike on Thursday.
Crises
North America
Facilities
United States
Manatee county jail, which has 1,200 incarcerated people and is located on the south-east side of Tampa Bay, in the path of the hurricane that was roaring towards it across the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, will not be evacuating, a representative of the jail told Newsweek on Tuesday.
Crises
North America
Health
Mental health
Overcrowding
United States
Another person has died in Los Angeles County jails, marking the 24th in-custody death so far this year and the 69th since the start of 2023.
Central America and the Caribbean
Mental health
Jamaica
Applications by the Legal Aid Council for the Supreme Court to release six incarcerated people with mental disorders, who were unfit to plead, were refused because the Judge Leighton Pusey found that there were no appropriate accommodations for them.
Africa
Pre-trial detention
Women
Material conditions
Facilities
Overcrowding
South Africa
The is the harsh reality what wardens and staff told the delegation they were faced with on a daily basis, often having to man over 200 remand imprisoned people awaiting trial. There are no windows or electrical sockets, beds or mattress or lights in cells they were housed in.
Asia
Justice
Overcrowding
Cambodia
The Ministry of Interior’s General Department of Prisons (GDP) is planning to hold a forum with relevant ministries, embassies, and human rights NGOs to find a comprehensive solution to ongoing overcrowding issues in prisons, as the number of incarcerated people continues to rise.
Africa
Justice
Rehabilitation
Nigeria
The Nigerian Correctional Service on Monday lamented that stigmatisation and societal rejection are forcing some formerly incarcerated people to return to its facilities. “The society is not ready to accept them. So they find it convenient to return to these prisons.”
Crises
Middle East
Health
Mental health
Protest
Social ties
Iran
Three women political prisoners in Tehran’s Evin prison have gone on hunger and medicine strikes to protest their conditions and treatment.
Crises
Middle East
Torture
Violence
Israel
Israeli prison guards are taking photos and filming their abuse of Palestinian detainees, while the Israeli Prison Service says this is a ‘routine exercise’. Incarcerated Palestinian people have reported being subject to violence, and other forms of severe abuse and humiliation.
Africa
Crises
Health
Material conditions
Overcrowding
Violence
Congo - Kinshasa
In attempting to describe Makala Prison - the scene of a deadly and failed breakout in the Democratic Republic of Congo - two people who have been inside used the exact same word: “hell”.“Makala is not a prison, but a detention centre resembling a concentration camp, where people are sent to die”.
Europe
Justice
Overcrowding
United Kingdom
Five of the former most senior judges have intervened in the debate over the prison population crisis to urge the government to reverse the trend of locking people up for longer – declaring that ‘radical solutions’ are required to tackle the prison population crisis.
Central America and the Caribbean
Health
Material conditions
Torture
Violence
Social ties
Nicaragua
“It was an ordeal I thought would never end,” says one of the 135 political prisoners exiled on September 5th to Guatemala by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. Former prisoners confirm physical and psychological torture.
Africa
Crises
Pre-trial detention
Access to legal rights
Health
Material conditions
Overcrowding
Violence
Congo - Kinshasa
Families of those killed in what authorities called an attempted jailbreak in Congo’s biggest prison are demanding answers from the government as activists denounce what they say are inhumane conditions in the nation’s overcrowded penitentiaries.
Minors
Oceania
Justice
Material conditions
Violence
Australia
Children have shared their experiences locked up in Banksia Hill Detention Centre in a report that slammed the Western Australian government for “systemic failures”.
North America
Health
Material conditions
Overcrowding
Violence
United States
This latest death follows one earlier this week at the same facility, Los Angeles’s Men’s Central Jail. The proximity of these tragedies underscores the urgency for Los Angeles County to honor the commitment it made in 2021 to close the facility and stop the cycle of death plaguing its jails.