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Penal Reform International (commonly known as PRI), founded in London in 1989, is an international nongovernmental organization working on penal and criminal justice reform worldwide.
PRI's stated goal is to promote safe and secure societies where offenders are held to account, victims’ rights are recognised, sentences are proportionate and the primary purpose of prison is social rehabilitation not retribution.
PRI has five offices worldwide. PRI’s Head Office in London (UK) leads and coordinates its cross-regional programmes, international policy and advocacy activities. Its regional offices in the Middle East and North Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the South Caucasus implement practical programmes and provide technical assistance at a national and regional level. PRI also currently delivers programmes through partners in East Africa and South Asia.
PRI has consultative status at the United Nations (ECOSOC), the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and the Council of Europe.
PRI produces information resources for policy-makers and criminal justice agencies, including research reports, policy briefings and training materials. Publications include Making Law and Policy that Work and more recently, Global Prison Trends, an annual overview of current trends and challenges in policy and practice in the criminal justice and penal fields.
PRI was founded in 1989 by a group of criminal justice and human rights activists after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Founder members include Ahmed Othmani, a former Tunisian political prisoner and activist, and Baroness Vivien Stern.
Since its establishment, PRI has worked at the United Nations to improve norms and standards to strengthen the protection of the rights of people in criminal justice systems.
It helped to negotiate the 2010 United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-Custodial Measures for Women Offenders. Between 2011 and 2015, it took part in the negotiations for the revision of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners – renamed ‘the Mandela Rules’ – a key set of standards used in prison administration.
PRI became known in particular for its work in Africa in the 1990s and 2000s, for example, helping to establish the Paralegal Advisory Service (PAS) in Malawi, which became a model for the development of paralegal services in other African countries, and setting up a community service programme in Zimbabwe in 1992 in response to a serious crisis of overcrowding in its prisons. PRI went on to develop community service programmes in Kenya and Burkina Faso, and is working in East Africa today with national probation services develop community service.
PRI also worked with the Rwandan government to deal with the overwhelming number of genocide cases in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This included the development and monitoring of the Gacaca Court (‘grass court’) process.
Incarceration in the United States is a primary form of punishment and rehabilitation for the commission of felony and other offenses. The United States has the largest prison population in the world, and the highest per-capita incarceration rate. One out of every 5 people imprisoned across the world is incarcerated in the United States. In 2018 in the US, there were 698 people incarcerated per 100,000; this includes the incarceration rate for adults or people tried as adults. Prison, parole, and probation operations generate an $81 billion annual cost to U.S. taxpayers, with an additional $63 billion for policing. Court costs, bail bond fees, and prison phone fees generate another $38 billion in individual costs.
The prison abolition movement is a network of groups and activists that seek to reduce or eliminate prisons and the prison system, and replace them with systems of rehabilitation that do not place a focus on punishment and government institutionalization. The prison abolitionist movement is distinct from conventional prison reform, which is the attempt to improve conditions inside prisons.
Prison reform is the attempt to improve conditions inside prisons, improve the effectiveness of a penal system, or implement alternatives to incarceration. It also focuses on ensuring the reinstatement of those whose lives are impacted by crimes.
Penal labour is a term for various kinds of forced labour which prisoners are required to perform, typically manual labour. The work may be light or hard, depending on the context. Forms of sentence involving penal labour have included involuntary servitude, penal servitude, and imprisonment with hard labour. The term may refer to several related scenarios: labour as a form of punishment, the prison system used as a means to secure labour, and labour as providing occupation for convicts. These scenarios can be applied to those imprisoned for political, religious, war, or other reasons as well as to criminal convicts.
JUSTICE is a human rights and law reform organisation based in the United Kingdom. It is the British section of the International Commission of Jurists, the international human rights organisation of lawyers devoted to the legal protection of human rights worldwide. Consequently, members of JUSTICE are predominantly barristers and solicitors, judges, legal academics, and law students.
Global Rights is an international human rights capacity-building non-governmental organization (NGO). Founded in Washington, D.C., in 1978 with the name International Human Rights Law Group, the organization changed its name to Global Rights: Partners for Justice in 2003 on the occasion of its 25th anniversary. In December 2014 it shut its Washington headquarters and devolved the center of its operations to its country office in Nigeria and Burundi from where the organization continues to work with local activists in Africa to promote and protect the rights of marginalized populations. It provided technical assistance and training to enable local partners to document and expose human rights abuses, conduct community outreach and mobilization, advocate for legal and policy reform, and provide legal and paralegal services.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is a department of the government of the U.S. state of Texas. The TDCJ is responsible for statewide criminal justice for adult offenders, including managing offenders in state prisons, state jails, and private correctional facilities, funding and certain oversight of community supervision, and supervision of offenders released from prison on parole or mandatory supervision. The TDCJ operates the largest prison system in the United States.
The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners were adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 17 December 2015 after a five-year revision process. They are known as the Mandela Rules in honor of the former South African President, Nelson Mandela. The Mandela Rules are composed of 122 "rules". Not all are rules, but some are principles such as institutional equality and the philosophy of confinement.
Rodney Emrys Morgan is Professor Emeritus, University of Bristol and Visiting Professor at the University of Sussex. He is the former chair of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (2004-7) and prior to that was HM Chief Inspector of Probation for England and Wales (2001-4).
The United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) is one of the five United Nations Research and Training Institutes. The Institute was founded in 1968 to assist the international community in formulating and implementing improved policies in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice. Its work currently focuses on Goal 16 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, that is centred on promoting peaceful, just and inclusive societies, free from crime and violence.
The National Criminal Justice Association (NCJA) is a Washington, D.C. based organization that represents a variety of local, state, and tribal governments on crime prevention and control issues. The organization primarily works as a public policy liaison that promotes understanding of the best criminal justice practices between federal and state governments.
The criminal justice system of the Netherlands is the system of practices and institutions of the Netherlands directed at upholding social control, deterring and mitigating crime, and sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts. The Netherlands' criminal code is based on the Napoleonic Code, imposed during the time of the French Empire. The Dutch largely kept the Napoleonic Code after their independence, but tempered it with a significantly more rehabilitative penological focus.
Prisons in Ireland are one of the main forms of punishment, rehabilitation, or both for the commission of an indictable offense and other offenses.
This article discusses the incarceration of women in correctional facilities. As of 2013 across the world, 625,000 women and children were being held in penal institutions, and the female prison population was increasing in all continents. The list of countries by incarceration rate includes a main table with a column for the historical and current percentage of prisoners who are female.
Rani Dhavan Shankardass is an Indian social historian and global expert on prison reform. She is the Secretary General of Penal Reform and Justice Association (PRAJA) and the President of Penal Reform International.
The International Penal and Penitentiary Foundation is an international organisation with quasi-governmental status. It promotes studies on crime-prevention and treatment of offenders, focussing on research, publications and teaching. It has been approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations and holds consultative status at the United Nations and the Council of Europe.
The Bangkok Rules, or formally, "The United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders", is a set of 70 rules focused on the treatment of female offenders and prisoners adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 22 December 2010. The Bangkok Rules, or the "70 Rules" as it is frequently known, is the first set of rules tailored to the treatment of women prisoners. It supplements existing international standards on the treatment of prisoners, particularly the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, which applies to all prisoners regardless of gender.
Criminal justice reform addresses structural issues in criminal justice systems such as racial profiling, police brutality, overcriminalization, mass incarceration, and recidivism. Criminal justice reform can take place at any point where the criminal justice system intervenes in citizens’ lives, including lawmaking, policing, and sentencing.
Norway's criminal justice system focuses on the principles of restorative justice and the rehabilitation of prisoners. Correctional facilities in Norway focus on maintaining custody of the offender and attempting to make them a functioning member of society. Norway's laws forbid the use of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment as punishment. Prison conditions typically meet international standards, and the government permits visits by any human rights observers. The system is considered to be transparent, and prisoners are represented by an ombudsman, an official appointed to investigate individuals’ complaints against public authority.
The Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ) a functional commission of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) based in Vienna. The commission serves as the primary organ that guides the activities of the United Nations in the fields of crime prevention and criminal justice.
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