Latest on our response to COVID-19
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As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread globally, concerns about the impact it may have on places of detention are growing. At PRI, we continue to advocate tirelessly for emergency and long-lasting measures to be taken, in an effort to prevent the spread of the disease and protect the human rights of the 11 million people deprived of liberty worldwide. Some other highlights of our work are:
- In Kazakhstan, PRI has provided relevant state authorities with expert support and recommendations for emergency measures to be taken in places of detention. Following the announcement of a temporary visit ban, a call centre for relatives, lawyers, National Preventive Mechanisms and representatives of Public Monitoring Commissions was established. People detained are now permitted to contact their families via video call, ensuring contact with the outside world is maintained. PRI also developed a number of infographics to provide information to people in prison and prison staff about COVID-19 and the measures in place and ensured that a livestream from the prison service with detailed information on the current situation in prisons would be made available to the public, allowing families and friends of detainees to monitor the situation closely.
- In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, overcrowded prisons, with deplorable detention conditions, are 'ticking time-bombs' waiting for the COVID-19 pandemic, according to PRI's Executive Director Florian Irminger. Read Al Jazeera's coverage of the situation here.
- The Justice Gap covers key messages from Global Prison Trends 2020 in light of the COVID-19 crisis.
- PRI's Director of Policy and International Advocacy, Olivia Rope, talks about dangerous conditions in places of detention in Asia and the impact of overcrowding during the pandemic. Read the story here.
- PRI co-published the briefing ‘COVID-19 and the Rights of Children of Parents who are Incarcerated: Impacts and Recommendations’, providing information on the impacts of COVID-19 for children of people in prison and recommendations on how to protect the rights of these children and their families during the pandemic.
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'Beyond the Prison Walls': PRI's documentary on Georgia's prison reform
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'Behind the Prison Walls' discusses the history of reform in the Georgian penitentiary system from the 1990s to present. Field experts discuss the current challenges faced by the penitentiary system, most notably the existence of large penitentiary institutions, a lack of rehabilitation and re-socialisation programmes, a lack of training among prison staff, and high prisoner to staff ratios. PRI's documentary takes a closer look at how these challenges can be overcome.
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Expert Blog: UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights calls for urgent penal reform
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In this expert blog for PRI, Ms Brands Kehris, the UN Assistant Secretary-General, speaks about the urgent need for long-term societal and institutional reform and says human rights must be front and centre of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In these unprecedented times, she argues that efforts to deliver fair, effective and human rights-compliant criminal justice processes and outcomes must be redoubled and alternatives to detention prioritised to reduce the impact of the virus on people in prison, particularly vulnerable groups. She writes:
'The COVID-19 crisis occurs in the context of a long-standing general crisis of the prison situation in the world, now exacerbated by the current public health emergency… Many detainees are suffering from serious diseases due to the lack of clean drinking water, proper ventilation and other factors due to the failure to uphold minimum standards for detention conditions. This situation poses particularly acute risks in case of an uncontrollable coronavirus outbreak and this poses unprecedented threats to the lives of detainees. From the onset of the crisis, our Office has been deeply concerned over the impact that the spread of COVID-19 is likely to have on persons deprived of their liberty.'
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Prisons and COVID-19: the real lockdown
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PRI needs your support
In these difficult times for organisations everywhere, we are doing our best to keep providing you with quality, informative materials on criminal justice systems worldwide and on how they respond to the COVID-19 crisis. From everywhere in the world, our dedicated staff are pushing for governmental reforms, providing emergency response, and fighting for the human rights of the millions of people in places of detention worldwide. We hope that you find our regular updates informative and interesting, and we are thankful for our ever growing audience. We are proud to be part of a fast-thinking, engaged community. Please support our hard work even further by making a donation today.
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