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Spotlight:
14th UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice
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The rescheduled 14th UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice will take place in Kyoto, Japan on 7-12 March 2021, in hybrid format with most people participating online only. PRI will participate in the Congress, presenting our work in Georgia on rehabilitation of women in prison and post release in Workshop 2, and in a number of ancillary meetings, highlighting key programmes and possibilities for reform, including in relation to children and young people, mental health, rehabilitation, life imprisonment, and global prison trends in light of the pandemic.
Registration is now open until 18 February 2021. Check PRI's website for updates on our events at the Congress which will be posted shortly.
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Coronavirus response continues
PRI continues to work with authorities to prevent and contain outbreaks of coronavirus in prisons, including in Uganda and Algeria. Almost half a million people in prison have tested positive for COVID-19 in 118 countries and over 3,600 deaths are reported in 40 countries. PRI is also working with partners to support calls for prison populations and staff to be prioritised in national vaccination programmes.
Middle East and North Africa
PRI is launching a new project in Sudan, in cooperation with the Prison and Reform Directorate of Sudan, to assess the capacity of the penitentiary system against human rights standards, with a view to improving protections for people in prison and supporting the rule of law.
This is the first time PRI has worked in Sudan since 2009. Challenges over the last few decades have been compounded by recent violence and unrest, and conditions in detention facilities are generally poor with high levels of overcrowding, lack of health services, poor sanitation and reports of torture and ill-treatment.
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Central Asia
Throughout 2021, PRI will hold a series of events on criminal justice reform in Central Asia. In Tajikistan in March, we will co-organise a Coordination Council to discuss future plans for prison reform, following on from the first Prison Forum held in November 2019. The Council will be comprised of representatives of state bodies, international organizations, diplomatic missions and CSOs. Later in the year, we will conduct training of trainer courses for judges and probation officers on alternatives to imprisonment in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
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New resources coming soon
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Look out for PRI's new briefing, 'Fragile and conflict-affected settings: Prisons and criminal justice systems', coming soon in English, French and Arabic.
We are also developing a tool, together with the Association for the Prevention of Torture, to support monitoring bodies to identify needs and risk factors related to older people in prison. And we will be issuing our annual Global Prison Trends report for 2021 in May, with new analysis on the trends from the past year.
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Arbitrary detention and compulsory drug treatment
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In the second expert blog of PRI's new series marking the 10th anniversary of the UN Bangkok Rules, Corina Giacomello presents the findings of research on women who use drugs in Mexico and are arbitrarily detained and often ill-treated in "rehabilitation" centres. As Corina notes, "the women in these centres have not been arrested, charged or convicted of any crime. They have not had any contact whatsoever with the criminal justice system – and yet they are detained." Read the full blog.
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