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Interviews

Prison Insider reaches out to individuals with expertise on prison. This section offers untold insights and specialist opinions exploring various prison-related issues.

December 9, 2019

France: “wearing the prison mark”

Interview

Europe Alternatives France

Alternative measures to prison apply to far more people than prisoners held in custodial facilities. In France, as in many Western countries, these measures are taking precedence over prison sentences. Just over 70,000 people were incarcerated at the start of 2019. At the same time, 170,000 offende…

December 5, 2019

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.

October 31, 2019

Uruguay: rethinking the prison system

Interview

America South America Uruguay

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,…

October 24, 2019

Belgium: “complete failure” of the section for radicalised prisoners

Interview

Crises 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…

October 7, 2019

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.

September 24, 2019

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…

September 24, 2019

Uruguay: rebuilding life after prison

Interview

America 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…

September 24, 2019

Kosovo: “corruption cases have destroyed the prison system”

Interview

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…

August 21, 2019

Protecting LGBTI people deprived of their freedom: a fundamental duty

Interview

LGBTQI

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…

August 20, 2019

“Prison confines the world in small spaces”

Interview

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…

August 19, 2019

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.

August 14, 2019

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…

August 7, 2019

Europe: "prisoners' rights under further pressure"

Interview

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…

August 5, 2019

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…

June 28, 2019

Belgium: No hope for improvement in voting system

Interview

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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May 7, 2019

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…

May 6, 2019

Detained abroad: far from sight, far from the lands

Interview

Prison damages bonds. Abroad, even more so: people detained abroad find themselves isolated in a complex system.

April 17, 2019

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…

April 8, 2019

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…

February 19, 2019

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…

January 21, 2019

Living conditions for those sentenced to death

Interview

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…

October 31, 2018

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…

July 6, 2018

Brazilian prisons, the "new slave houses"

Interview

America 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…