Prison population data reveal a much faster growth in female than male prisoner numbers since the year 2000. While the number of women and girls in prison has grown by almost 60%, the male prison population increased by around 22%.
ICPR is delighted that the third edition of our key publication A Human Rights Approach to Prison Management: Handbook for Prison Staff has been translated into Mandarin. The Handbook provides a basis for good prison management which can be applied in every prison system in the world.
The Handbook is based on the internationally agreed standards for the use of imprisonment and conditions of detention and it provides clear, practical guidance for prison staff as to their implementation. It demonstrates that as well as providing an appropriate framework for the management of prisons, the international standards can be very effective in operational terms.
Birkbeck’s annual Public Engagement Awards recognise and celebrate researchers who have undertaken innovative and exemplary public engagement activities. ICPR has won this year’s Birkbeck Public Engagement award in the category of ‘public participation in research’. This category recognises projects in which the involvement of the public or various publics is an inherent part of the research process.
As the Commonwealth heads of government meet in Kigali, Catherine Heard, Director of the World Prison Research Programme, calls for better data as a first step to ending chronic prison overcrowding.
Dr Sarah Lamble is a Reader in Criminology and Queer Theory at the School of Law, Birkbeck and researches issues of gender, sexuality and imprisonment, as well as alternative forms of justice. Sarah is an organiser with Abolitionist Futures and a founding member of the Bent Bars Project, which coordinates a letter-writing programme for LGBTQ prisoners in Britain.
Here, Sarah reflects on Justice Edwin Cameron’s recent ICPR annual lecture, titled: 'Do prisons work? If not, do prisons inspectorates do more harm than good?’, applying the concept of ‘non-reformist’ reforms. This term, coined by Austrian philosopher André Gorz with reference to political economy, was further developed by prison abolitionists Thomas Mathieson and Angela Davis.
Ready to lead a cutting-edge comparative prisons research project? We are recruiting for a senior postdoctoral researcher to lead a project examining prison-based work and employment in the UK, Brazil, and the USA.
Do prisons work? If not, do prisons inspectorates do more harm than good? Justice Edwin Cameron will consider these questions in a lecture titled: ‘Prisons and prisons inspectorates: puzzles and paradoxes'.
Some 11.5 million people are held in penal institutions throughout the world, according to the latest edition of the World Prison Population List (WPPL), researched and compiled by Helen Fair and Roy Walmsley and published on 1 December 2021 by the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR), at Birkbeck, University of London.
What explains the world’s rising prisoner numbers? Does prison overcrowding impact public health? How has the pandemic affected prisoners and prisoner numbers? All countries use prison as a response to crime and disorder, but to vastly differing extents. Countries face similar dilemmas in how to deal effectively with crime, yet they make widely different policy choices in response – choices with huge societal impacts.
The prisons research team at the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR) at Birkbeck, University of London has published new research on measures taken to control the risk of COVID-19 in prisons, and their impact on prisoners’ health and wellbeing. The research covers a diverse group of countries across five continents and includes first-hand accounts of how life in custody changed from March 2020.