Prison Insider in 2019

Florence Laufer assumed her duties as Director of Prison Insider on 4 August 2019, following a careful selection process. The responsibility that falls to her is great, as is the confidence we all have in her.

So here I am, at the end of a career that had me chasing what remains a dream: creating an organisation that will expose, on a global scale, the challenges of imprisonment, its impasses, its horrors, and its perspectives, too.

Creating something is never simple. The Prison Insider team, our Board of Directors and those who support our work in a thousand different ways have, for three years now, been working to build an organisation dedicated to those confined to a place neglected by democracy: prison. This undertaking could only ever be collective.

Prisons are a consequence of poorly distributed wealth. The more this wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few, the more problems multiply, and the faster the freedom-depriving machine runs. An individual crushed by imprisonment is wretched, oppressed… or dissident. Dissidents call for solidarity.

The poor and the wretched never do. It is up to Prison Insider to swing into action when no one else is in a hurry to do so. And we, who carry little to no weight, consider that the poor, oppressed, imprisoned individual deserves the most valuable attention.

Creating, on a global scale, an organisation concerned with the fate of ordinary prisoners is a misunderstood necessity. There is very little time separating democracy from what could happen next. Time is running out.

I arrived in the summer of 2019, eager to run the beautiful adventure that is Prison Insider, after some fifteen years supporting the forces of social change. I have managed programmes in diverse areas, including international cooperation, social cohesion in the context of migration, and the resolution of religion-based conflicts.

Over the past six months, I have discovered a dynamic and demanding organisation. Inspired by the unfailing support of the Board of Directors, drawn from all walks of life, and of a big family of allies, I am delighted to be joining a professional and ultra-committed team.

The organisational work that has already begun remains to be completed: further refining the processes of production of information, scaling up the sustained rate of publication, be it updates or new information; strengthening the organisation’s core competencies and raison d’être, all while finding time and resources to develop new projects.

In order to encourage concrete change, one must be familiar with detention conditions around the world. Our rigorous, independent, and accessible information enables policymakers to gather knowledge and insights before taking action on prison policies and practices. It allows citizens to participate in the public debate. And it offers a venue for prisoners and their loved ones to make their voices heard. Prison Insider documents failures in the area of human rights and compares practices to show that prison systems can change. Prison Insider’s non-partisan and multi-dimensional information constitutes a mission of public interest.