Violence
Elderly prisoners
Middle East
Health
Material conditions
Facilities
Suicide
Torture
Violence
Social ties
Egypt
The horrific Sednaya Prison in Syria has thrown the spotlight on the reality of Egypt’s prisons, the files of those forgotten behind bars, and the fate of the victims of torture and forced disappearance during the rule of current Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.
Crises
Middle East
Health
Material conditions
Overcrowding
Death penalty
Torture
Violence
Social ties
Iran
Inside one of Iran’s most notorious prisons, over 2,000 incarcerated people are crammed into cells meant to hold just a few hundred. Days after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, as the world recoils at images of Syria’s Seydnaya prison, Iranian survivors recognize a horror all too fami…
Asia
Access to legal rights
Protest
Torture
Violence
Armenia
A 29-year-old Iranian man was sentenced to three years and one month in prison in Armenia. According to IranWire sources, Mohammad Havashemzadeh, who had been detained during the 2022 protests in Iran, had only appeared in court once in the past five months to hear the charges against him.
Oceania
Justice
Health
Mental health
Material conditions
Violence
Australia
Prison guards switched off the water to the cell of a mentally ill and dying man as punishment for his strange behaviour, joked that his repeated pleas for help were “entertaining”, and then left him unobserved to die at Silverwater jail from a treatable illness that was inexplicably missed.
Crises
Women
Minors
Middle East
Facilities
Death penalty
Torture
Violence
Social ties
Syria
The Syrian civil defence group known as the White Helmets says it is investigating reports from survivors of the country’s notorious Saydnaya prison that people are being detained in hidden underground cells.
Africa
North America
Central America and the Caribbean
South America
Asia
Europe
Middle East
Justice
Health
Mental health
Material conditions
Torture
Violence
Activities
Social ties
How can the complexity of information on prison conditions be made accessible and used to support change? The Prison Life Index is the result of a multidisciplinary collaboration between academics and members of civil society.
Oceania
Justice
Drugs
Violence
Rehabilitation
New Zealand
Prison reform advocates say the Corrections department is unable to deliver effective rehabilitation for imprisoned people.
In the last financial year, Corrections spent $376 million on rehabilitation - but most of the programmes it ran reduced reoffending by less than 2 percent.
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.
Crises
South America
Minors
Justice
Protest
Torture
Violence
Venezuela
Venezuela’s government on Saturday released some of the thousands of people who were detained during and after deadly protests that followed the July presidential election.
Prisons in the eye of the storm
Analysis
Thematic paper
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.
Crises
Middle East
Torture
Violence
Israel
Israeli prison guards are taking photos and filming their abuse of Palestinian detainees, while the Israeli Prison Service says this is a ‘routine exercise’. Incarcerated Palestinian people have reported being subject to violence, and other forms of severe abuse and humiliation.
Africa
Crises
Health
Material conditions
Overcrowding
Violence
Congo - Kinshasa
In attempting to describe Makala Prison - the scene of a deadly and failed breakout 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 to die”.
Central America and the Caribbean
Health
Material conditions
Torture
Violence
Social ties
Nicaragua
“It was an ordeal I thought would never end,” says one of the 135 political prisoners exiled on September 5th to Guatemala by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. Former prisoners confirm physical and psychological torture.
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 facility and stop the cycle of death plaguing its jails.
Europe
Minors
Mental health
Drugs
Protest
Overcrowding
Violence
Rehabilitation
United Kingdom
Prisons across the country are in a deep state of crisis – the extent of which is exposed by the latest statistics. Soaring rates of violence, self-harm and drug misuse have become widespread in overcrowded prisons in England and Wales.
Crises
Middle East
Health
Material conditions
Torture
Violence
Israel
In a new 118-page report, the Israeli rights group B’Tselem accused the government of conducting a policy of institutionalised abuse and torture against all Palestinian detainees since 7 October.
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.