News
Europe
Material conditions
Overcrowding
Alternatives
Ireland
The deprivation of a person’s liberty alone is a core punitive sanction that has a long-lasting and often traumatic impact on an individual – the conditions and treatment experienced by individuals in prison should not be used as an additional punishment.
United Kingdom: report critical of prison's 'limited' support for neurodiverse incarcerated people
News
Europe
Mental health
Rehabilitation
United Kingdom
An inspection of Jersey’s only prison has led to concerns being raised about a lack of support for neurodiverse incarcerated people. The report found that while 23 people had been identified as neurodivergent, few had care plans in place, and staff awareness of how to support them was “weak”.
Women
Europe
Health
United Kingdom
The Ministry of Justice is investigating claims by two incarcerated female that they were handcuffed to male officers during labour, antenatal appointments, and intimate vaginal examinations. The alleged incidents occurred between 2021 and 2023 at HMP Bronzefield in west London.
United States: lethal injection, electrocution and now firing squads. A look at US execution methods
News
North America
Death penalty
United States
South Carolina is preparing to execute a man by firing squad, a capital punishment method that hasn’t been used in the U.S. in nearly 15 years. Since the Supreme Court lifted its ban on capital punishment in 1976, states have used five different execution methods.
Dominican Republic: officials cram thousands of people facing no charges into overcrowded prisons
News
Central America and the Caribbean
Pre-trial detention
Long-term prisoners
Access to legal rights
Health
Material conditions
Overcrowding
Dominican Republic
They’re known as “frog men,” incarcerated people who are forced to sleep on prison floors, often next to overflowing toilets or holes in the ground that serve as one. Thousands of them are crammed into the country’s severely overcrowded prisons, some operating at seven times their capacity.
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.
Middle East
Access to legal rights
Health
Social ties
Iran
An incarcerated person has died in an Iranian jail after officials denied him medical treatment and placed him in quarantine as punishment for protesting his lack of care. Hassan Damani, 33, died on February 12 in Lajvardi Prison in Iranshahr, according to human rights groups.
Women
Europe
Mental health
Suicide
Violence
United Kingdom
Prison is not a place of safety. For women especially, it is a place of chaos and trauma where vulnerable people struggle to maintain their dignity, let alone sanity.
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.
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
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.
Crises
Middle East
Foreign prisoners
Health
Overcrowding
Lebanon
More than 100 syrians incarcerated in Lebanon’s central prison have begun an open-ended hunger strike demanding to be sent home to complete their trials and prison sentences.
Women
Europe
Mental health
Material conditions
Suicide
Social ties
United Kingdom
A lack of basic care lies behind a surge in the rate of self-harm in women’s prisons, according to a thematic report by the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor. In the report, Taylor describes a service that is failing and describes the findings as “deeply depressing”.
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.
Central America and the Caribbean
Health
Material conditions
Trinidad & Tobago
The Prison Officers’ Association (POA) is demanding immediate government intervention, following the disappearance of a water pump from the Maximum Security Prison (MSP), Arouca, and a pigeon infestation at the Eastern Correctional Rehabilitation Centre (ECRC) in Santa Rosa.
North America
LGBTQI
Health
Mental health
Violence
Social ties
United States
An incarcerated trans woman who underwent top and bottom surgeries was forced into a men’s facility, according to the latest lawsuit from trans people in prison targeting Trump’s executive order.
Pre-trial detention
South America
Women
Foreign prisoners
LGBTQI
Overcrowding
Argentina
A total of 11,696 people were detained in federal prisons nationwide at the end of 2024, with overcrowding placed at 6.3 percent, revealed the Procuraduría de Violencia Institucional (Prosecutor’s Office for Institutional Violence, PROCUVIN) in its annual report.
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.