“With regard to human rights, the compass is not complicated. It points very clearly to human dignity.”¶
- Jean-Marie Delarue (France’s first Controller-General of Places of Deprivation of Liberty, 2008 — 2014), at Concertina 2023.¶
However, said Mr Delarue, the golden age of human rights is behind us. They are gradually being whittled away. We refuse to be guided by a compass that elevates safety above all other liberties. Ours does not waver. It points to dignity and fundamental rights. It is our responsibility to make them tangible, to make them relevant. We work to shed light on how prisoners are treated, country by country. When we report that someone’s rights have been violated, it is their dignity that is under attack. Inhuman and degrading treatment is never far behind. And then torture.
The sentence is announced and the gavel strikes: eleven months, ten years, a few weeks. A far cry from some disembodied justice, prison is the place where sanctions take shape, twisting daily routine into something mundane, protracted and harmful.
However, other systems are progressively gaining ground. They include smaller-scale “detention houses” in the Netherlands, community placement for women in Scotland and halfway houses in Canada. Although these experiments are no magic bullet or even a satisfactory solution to the problems of the prison system, they can still help bring about change, as they represent alternative possibilities. Elsewhere, networks are coming together to fight the criminalisation of poverty. They are pinpointing injustices, warning about the vulnerability of activists and questioning the heavy reliance on incarceration.
Measuring the weight of prison; providing the keys to understand it and think about it differently; and documenting violations of rights and dignity: These were the tasks Prison Insider accomplished in 2023. Our team questions, measures, and interprets to provide information that encourages progress. This work bears a considerable cost. It serves the crucial roles of reflecting the nuanced realities of prison life and mobilising forces. It must help improve conditions of imprisonment and prevent acts of torture.
