Material conditions
Crises
Minors
Middle East
Access to legal rights
Health
Material conditions
Facilities
Overcrowding
Torture
Violence
Social ties
Israel
Thousands of Palestinians are currently deprived of their liberty by the Israeli authorities, a figure that has risen sharply in the last year. What is the current situation? Answers from the Palestinian association Addameer.
Morocco: ink flows
Testimonial
Africa
Justice
Material conditions
Overcrowding
Morocco
Hicham Mansouri is a journalist. He was arrested in 2015 on false charges and imprisoned. He shares his journey, his life in detention, and the investigation he conducted behind bars.
Africa
Material conditions
Facilities
Overcrowding
South Africa
Overcrowding, ageing and creaking infrastructure and shortage of staff were some of the problems witnessed by members of the parliamentary portfolio committee on correctional services during a visit to some Gauteng prisons this week.
Women
Middle East
Health
Material conditions
Iran
Varisheh Moradi, a political prisoner serving her sentence in Tehran’s Evin Prison, has begun a hunger strike to protest the death sentences handed to female activists in Iran. Moradi, imprisoned in the women’s ward of Evin, started the hunger strike on Thursday.
Prisons in the eye of the storm
Analysis
Crises
North America
South America
Asia
Europe
Oceania
Health
Mental health
Material conditions
Facilities
Overcrowding
Violence
Prisons, many of which are old and located in vulnerable areas, are being severely affected by climate change. What are prison administrations doing in response to these disasters? Overview.
Africa
Pre-trial detention
Women
Material conditions
Facilities
Overcrowding
South Africa
The stench of faeces inside a toilet filled with waste, fly-infested and leaking cells, flooded floors, beds without mattresses, damaged infrastructure, crime and corruption is what greeted Correctional Services Minister Dr Pieter Groenewald and members of the portfolio committee on security and ju…
Africa
Crises
Health
Material conditions
Overcrowding
Violence
Congo - Kinshasa
In attempting to describe Makala Prison - the scene of a deadly and failed breakout this week in the Democratic Republic of Congo - two people who have been inside used the exact same word: “hell”.“Makala is not a prison, but a detention centre resembling a concentration camp, where people are sent…
Central America and the Caribbean
Health
Material conditions
Torture
Violence
Social ties
Nicaragua
“It was an ordeal I thought would never end,” says Jose Enrique Sanchez, one of the 135 political prisoners exiled on September 5th to Guatemala by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. “We lived in precarious conditions,” “we endured psychological torture,” “threats to our familie…
Africa
Crises
Pre-trial detention
Access to legal rights
Health
Material conditions
Overcrowding
Violence
Congo - Kinshasa
Families of those killed in what authorities called an attempted jailbreak in Congo’s biggest prison are demanding answers from the government as activists denounce what they say are inhumane conditions in the nation’s overcrowded penitentiaries.
Minors
Oceania
Justice
Material conditions
Violence
Australia
Children have shared their experiences locked up in Banksia Hill Detention Centre in a report that slammed the Western Australian government for “systemic failures”.
North America
Health
Material conditions
Overcrowding
Violence
United States
This latest death follows one earlier this week at the same facility, Los Angeles’s Men’s Central Jail. The proximity of these tragedies underscores the urgency for Los Angeles County to honor the commitment it made in 2021 to close the dangerous facility and stop the cycle of death plaguing its ja…
North America
Health
Material conditions
Facilities
United States
Legal action aims to force criminal justice department to air condition prisons, where 85,000 are at risk of heat illnesses.
Women
Elderly prisoners
Europe
Minors
Health
Material conditions
Turkey
Lawyers associations in Turkey visited the Batman closed prison to report human rights violations experienced by the group of youths arrested for dancing to Kurdish music. Accordingly, the group was strip searched and forced to listen to nationalistic marches as “punishment.”
Crises
Middle East
Health
Material conditions
Torture
Violence
Israel
Israeli authorities are systematically abusing Palestinians in torture camps, subjecting them to severe violence and sexual assault, B’Tselem said on Monday. In a new 118-page report, the Israeli rights group accused the government of conducting a policy of institutionalised abuse and torture again…
Middle East
Health
Material conditions
Overcrowding
Violence
Egypt
Six detainees have died in one week at a detention centre in the al-Sharqia governorate in Egypt, the Egyptian Network for Human Rights (ENHR) has reported. Egyptian rights group says detainees suffered from “suffocation” due to overcrowding and poor ventilation.
Crises
Middle East
Health
Material conditions
Iran
For the past twenty days, prisoners in Ghezel (Qezel) Hesar Prison in Karaj have faced significant issues with accessing clean water. During this period, the inmates have only had access to safe drinking water for seven hours a day, putting their health at serious risk. The prison officials’ failur…
Choosing the angle
Insights
Focus
North America
Women
Health
Material conditions
United States
A woman in the Central California Women’s Facility, located in the Central valley city of Chowchilla, died as temperatures in the region climbed above 110F (43.3C). The California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP), an advocacy group, said it appeared the woman suffered a preventable heat death.…
Europe
Material conditions
Suicide
Overcrowding
Italy
“This is a high figure compared to the same month of July in 2023 and 2022, when 34 were recorded (with an increase of 16 deaths)” read the guarantor’s report. “There are 48 men and 2 women, 27 are Italian and 23 foreigners, from 14 different countries. Of the people who took their own lives, 19 (3…
Europe
Material conditions
Facilities
Bulgaria
Minister of Justice Maria Pavlova opened on Friday a new dormitory at the prison in Plovdiv. The poor state of the Hebros dormitories had led to continuous complaints about living conditions from prisoners, Pavlova said. The new building, she said, meets all European and international requirements,…
Europe
Material conditions
Overcrowding
Ireland
The Inspector of Prisons has said the record levels of overcrowding in jails is “deplorable” and that he has been “sounding the alarm” of the crisis since he took up the position in August 2022.Mark Kelly also expressed grave concern at the “undesirable uptick in physical violence” the worsening ov…
Crises
North America
Health
Material conditions
Facilities
United States
Over the past two decades, nearly 13,000 people have perished behind bars during America’s summer months. However, many of these deaths are not typically attributed to heat, the product of poor death-counting practices that have led to an undercount of heat-related deaths for decades. Still, deaths…