Testimonials
Interviews
Prison Insider reaches out to individuals with expertise on prison. Researchers, members of associations and institutions, decision-makers, stakeholders and individuals called to intervene in prisons: they all offer diverse viewpoints on imprisonment. This section offers untold insights and specialist opinions exploring various prison-related issues.
“Parodies of justice” in Iraq
Interview
Foreign prisoners
Middle East
Justice
Death penalty
Torture
Violence
Iraq
The Iraqi justice system has some flaws – quick trials, non-existent legal assistance and judgements based on confessions rather than the evidence. Yet several countries have declined to repatriate their citizens who are accused of terrorism, putting them at risk of torture or the death penalty.
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France: an elusive escape
Interview
Culture
Europe
Activities
France
Natacha Galvez taught art history to inmates at Fleury-Mérogis. She is head of communications for the organisation Art et Prison. She is studying for her doctorate in philosophie esthétique and her thesis is on the creation of art in the prison environment. The following is our interview with her.
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Uruguay: rethinking the prison system
Interview
South America
It was a risky gamble that paid off for Luis Parodi, director for seven years now of Unit 6 of the Punta de Rieles prison in Montevideo. According to him, “Prison denies debate, and consequently denies life. There are absurd orders all the time.” This unit, which aims to resemble the outside world,…
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Europe
Belgium
Belgium was condemned on 24 April 2019 and will have to compensate several prisoners in the De-Radex section of the Ittre prison. Prisoners suspected to be recruiting members for jihadist organisations are isolated in these sections.
Nicolas Cohen is a lawyer at the Brussels Bar and a member of the…
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Madagascar: out of sight
Interview
Africa
Women
Material conditions
Activities
Social ties
Madagascar
Elise Maillot is 30 years old. She has been visiting prisons for the last two years. She was in Madagascar, her home country, at the end of 2018. There, she visited the Manjakandriana prison for women. Prison Insider asked her three questions.
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France: prisons and mental health
Interview
Europe
Health
Mental health
France
People with mental illness are over represented in the prison population. This group is particularly vulnerable and subjected to violence and abuse. Prison psychiatry is a sector that has undergone significant changes lately, in France and elsewhere. Where do we stand right now?
In July 2014, Adeli…
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Uruguay: rebuilding life after prison
Interview
South America
Uruguay
They founded a cooperative to mitigate housing and employment challenges. These cooperatives are one of the measures put in place to give low-income residents access to lodging through financial support from the State.
Self-management, solidarity and participatory democracy are the central values…
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Kosovo is a small country of about 11,000 km². It has 12 prisons and 1,648 prisoners, according to the last published figures. The Kosova Rehabilitation Centre for Torture Victims (KRCT) monitors and visits prisons to defend and promote human rights. Alban Muriqi is a law graduate and a project man…
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LGBTI
The Association for the Prevention of Torture (APT), headquartered in Geneva, has been working for forty years to prevent abuse in prison, especially by strengthening the monitoring bodies in places of deprivation of liberty. It is publishing a monitoring guide for the protection of LGBTI persons i…
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Books written by Brigitte Brami carry an impression of walls and confinement: all her works are either inspired by or were completed in prison. Solidarity between women, violence, and body constraints: this is how she perceives prisons.
Prison Insider spoke to Brigitte Brami, a poet and former pris…
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Japan: surveillance and old age
Interview
Asia
Long-term prisoners
Mental health
Japan
Akaike Kazumasa is a criminologist and specialises in the Japanese prison system.
Rate of imprisonment, working as a prisoner, prisoners’ age: Prison Insider asks him three questions to understand the particularities of the country’s penitentiary system.
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Prisoners during the war
Interview
Seven million people were imprisoned during the First World War. One hundred years later, the exhibition ‘7 Million’ focuses on their living conditions in the camps, the reality of their captivity, and the political issues they created for the states in conflict.
The International Committee of the…
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Europe
Access to legal rights
A Dutch judge, in May 2019, refused to transfer a person to an English prison, stating that the conditions of detention could amount to a real risk of inhumane and degrading treatment. The prisoner was the subject of an European Arrest Warrant (EAW).
The European legal framework facilitates judicia…
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Prison as seen by children
Interview
Several 9/10-year-old classes drew their impressions of the carceral universe. Lise Simon and Caroline Touraut work for the Direction of Penitentiary Administration in France.
They developed this project, gathered the drawings after meeting with the children through workshops.
We asked them about…
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Europe
Belgium
Most Belgian prisoners have the right to vote but few choose to exercise it. Vanessa de Greef, PhD in law at the Open University of Brussels, is studying this topic as part of her research. In her capacity as vice-president of the Belgian League for Human Rights, she took part in organising worksho…
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Rescaled: prisons in the city
Interview
Rescaled project is the fruit of the partnership between different organisations from four European countries. The movement began in Belgium and aims at prompting a change in scale for prison related practices. It promotes the use of smaller prison facilities located in the heart of the city.
On 10…
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Africa: prisons and contexts
Interview
Are overpopulation, squalor, epidemics and malnutrition all there is to prisons in Africa? Frédéric Le Marcis, a professor of social anthropology at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) de Lyon, and Marie Morelle, a geography lecturer at the University Paris 1 - Panthéon Sorbonne, claim not. Marcis a…
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Greenland: monitoring and rehab
Interview
Greenland
The country, which has a very small population, is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Although it has enjoyed autonomy with respect to its justice system since 2009, the prison system remains under Danish control. Greenland currently has 139 prisoners and six prisons. It has an incarceration rate of 2…
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France: from the pen to the polls
Interview
Europe
Access to legal rights
Discipline
France
As of 1994, convicted people are no longer stripped of their civil rights. In principle, the majority of prisoners retain their right to vote. However, only 2% of them were able to vote during the last presidential elections. Incarceration prevents many prisoners from exercising this right.
The Ro…
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Death penalty
Violence
Worldwide, there are 20,000 people sentenced to death. They are detained in countries that still use the death penalty like China, Iran, the United States, Japan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Others are detained in countries that no longer use the death penalty, for instance Mauritania. These prison…
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New Zealand: imprisoned minorities
Interview
Oceania
New Zealand
The New Zealand prison population has doubled in the last 15 years. Prison Insider published the figures in January 2017, in New Zealand’s country-profile, and cautioned that the record number of 10,000 prisoners was about to be surpassed and as predicted, this number was reached in June 2018.
Tani…
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South America
Brazil
Brazil has the third largest prison population in the world. Renata Tavares da Costa has been working as a public defender in Rio de Janeiro for the past ten years.
She agreed to give an exclusive interview to Prison Insider on her analysis of the situation and the mechanisms, which in her opinion…
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