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While prison reform has hardly figured in the US Presidential campaign, there are signs that America’s love affair with incarceration may be coming to an end.  Hard pressed states can no longer afford the luxury of imprisonment on a scale that dwarfs European rates.  At its peak in 2008, despite spending 11.5% of its budget on prisons,  California still had inmates living on  three level bunks in prison gyms or other forms of “non traditional housing”. Federal and Supreme Court judgements have forced the state to reduce its prison numbers to less than 135% of capacity by next June.

Using a range of measures, the state may just about be on course to meet its target, with numbers falling from more than 170,000 to 133,000 in the last five years. Reforming parole practices so that ex prisoners are not automatically returned for  technical violations, allowing prisoners to earn early release and strengthening alternatives to detention have been  conventional ways of dampening demand along with modest reforms to criminal statutes.

More controversial has been the way that the 2011 Public Safety Realignment Act has shifted responsibility for lower level offenders from the state to the 58 counties. County jails and probation staff are now dealing with many more offenders than hitherto, expanding capacity with a billion dollar grant from the state and managing demand through reforms to pre trial detention and sheriff’s powers to release prisoners early.

California’s cap may have been imposed by the courts but it is not alone in downsizing its prison population. Pennsylvania ‘s senate has passed laws seeking  to divert non-violent, addicted offenders from state prison by better treating their addiction issues at the local level. New York’s fall in prison numbers is well known Even Texas has embraced changes such as problem solving courts with individualised treatment programs for drug offenders, drunk drivers, veterans and sex workers, some of whom at least would previously have gone to prison.

The trend is not universal with Idaho running out of space and sending prisoners to neighbouring states. Overcrowding in Illinois has led to a class action in a prison where men allegedly have to remove cockroach faeces from their pillows and clothing. The federal system too has a growing prison population and faces years of overcrowding. Currently there is much less scope within it than in the state systems for shortening sentences or transferring inmates.

Next year’s conference of the International Correction and Prisons Association (ICPA) has the title Thinking Outside the Cell -Reducing the Use of Imprisonment. The venue is perhaps surprisingly not in Europe but in Colorado.  This is a state, it was reported this week, that faces paying for a new prison, that due to falling numbers,  it no longer needs. The Conference theme may be optimistic but suggests that the tide may have turned. Mr President – Please take note .

British Prime Minister David Cameron unveiled a new “tough but intelligent” criminal justice policy this week in a major speech delivered after a visit to Wormwood Scrubs prison in West London. Having replaced a  socially liberal Justice Minister with more of a hardliner last month,   Cameron was expected to usher in a harsher set of policies , partly to satisfy the more punitive members of his own Conservative party and also to seek to restore some credibility with the wider electorate following a series of government blunders .

In fact the new approach appears more balanced than many progressives had feared. Whether constrained by his liberal party coalition partners, lack of funds or personal ideology,  it  was somewhat reassuring to hear a Prime Minister say that   he was not going to try and out-bid any other politician on toughness   and that prevention was better than cure. The long promised “rehabilitation revolution” in prisons is still to be pursued and there were positive words about the need to stick with people after release from prison and give them proper support, “because it’s not outer space we’re releasing these people into – it’s our streets, our towns, among our families and our children.”

Despite this , Cameron could not resist telling his audience that  on the punishment of criminals he did not want  there to be any doubt that he  will be tougher (although tougher than what he did not say)  He wants  to see people who ruin the lives of others – rapists, murderers, muggers – behind bars, and kept there for a long time and  said he has  always supported the principle of the life sentence, trumpeting the new  two strikes and you’re out mandatory life sentences for serious sexual and violent crimes. Two days  after his speech , Cameron told Parliament he had no intention of complying with the European Court judgement requiring the UK to amend its blanket ban on prisoners voting.

What changes in policy and practice will this rather incoherent rhetoric   produce? On custodial places, Cameron promised that for anyone sentenced to a spell in prison, there will be space. Dismissing the idea of arbitrary targets for the prison population, Cameron argued that the number of people behind bars will not be about bunks available but about how many people have committed serious crimes. Writing a seemingly open cheque for prison expansion is something he may come to regret.

Legislation is underway to make community sentences more demanding, which could increase their credibility as alternatives to short jail terms with courts and the public but could equally soak up resources and increase rates of non compliance .

But perhaps the biggest impact on criminal justice may come from the government’s plans to change the way services are organised and funded. The Probation service – barely mentioned in the speech – is in effect being dismantled with plans to scatter its functions to a patchwork of private companies and charities. Rehabilitation services are to be subject to a payment by results system that has yet to show any results itself in any area of social provision.  Heroic assumptions are being made about the savings which will be made by  greater private sector involvement  .

These changes are similar to those inflicted on the National Health Service in controversial legislation last year. In the case of the NHS the Coalition Partners the Liberal Democrats called for a pause so that an independent and expert assessment could be undertaken of the impact of the policy. As a result important safeguards were introduced to limit the scope of the market.

In view of the disparity between the scale of the changes being proposed for criminal justice and the strength of the evidence for them, the case for a similar pause and assessment is a strong one. Without it there is a risk that whatever the rhetoric,  enormous damage will be done to the day to day functioning of criminal justice in England and Wales.

A few miles south west of Kampala, past the turn off to Buddo, lies a small wooded area a bit bigger than a football pitch.  The field is surrounded by a trench, mostly about ten metres deep but with larger holes in places. The ground is well tended and a couple of small fires burn, one next to a tree another down in the ditch, where a young man, clasping a bottle sways drunkenly about , surrounded by  spears  and other weaponry.  This is Kareteke, a deadly royal prison where at the end of the 19th century King Kalema dispatched his relatives who sought to depose him from the throne.  Men women and children were hurled into the then 30 metre trench where protruding spears and spikes ensured a slow and painful death.

The atmospheric site is a reminder of the sometimes brutal punishments that were used in Uganda and acts to dispel the romantic notion, still propounded, that traditional ways of dealing with crime and resolving disputes were limited to compensation and reconciliation. It is true that the pervasive use of imprisonment arrived only with the Europeans and that prisons have like all colonial institutions created some horrible distortions in development. But   punitive practices and attitudes both pre-date and outlive the colonial experience in East Africa.  Asked in a recent UN survey what sentence would be appropriate for a young burglar who had stolen a colour TV for the second time, more than half of respondents in Uganda favoured prison, more than 60% in Kenya and two thirds in Tanzania.  Smaller percentages favoured fines or community service than when the same question has been put in other parts of the world.

Any sentences of course can only be applied in cases which reach the courts. Some are dealt with in other ways. The Uganda Human Rights Commission last year reported on their efforts to combat escalating incidents  of mob justice through radio broadcasts and media briefings,  listing  several cases where police detention beyond the legal limit were occasioned by a fear of crowds taking the law into their own hands. It was suggested during a recent visit to Luzira Prison in Kampala that one reason  the 3,000  detainees  prefer to endure gross overcrowding rather than  seek to escape the custody  of their 200 captors may well be that they are safer in prison than outside.

In this context, courts in East Africa struggle to square notions of proportionality with community expectations of harsh sentences. Long periods of imprisonment are regularly imposed for relatively small thefts.  Alternatives to prison have struggled to find a role.  While courts can impose community service in place of a prison sentence of up to three years in Kenya and Tanzania and two years in Uganda, it is most commonly served for a matter of hours or days for very petty and often victimless offences- drinking, loitering, and creating a disturbance or for bye law infractions.

The introduction of sentencing guidelines may help to locate community service higher up the sentencing tariff but without efforts to tackle the punishment culture, greater use of non custodial sentences could provoke more vigilantism. The argument – which one might expect to play well in low income countries – that it is better for an offender to   benefit the public through unpaid labour than cost the public while idling in prison – has not proved as persuasive as it might. This is despite the fact that in some cases  community service work can  be hard- literally breaking rocks in a municipal quarry in the Rift Valley for example .

One way in which the climate of opinion might be tackled would be to ensure that the specific victim of a crime as well as the broader community benefits from an offender’s unpaid efforts The law requires community service orders to involve public works of one kind or another. It could be amended so that a proportion of the work could benefit the individual or family who has lost out through the offence. This might involve the offender working on the victim’s land, or contributing his  time to assist  in other ways. Providing direct reparation could make community service a much more attractive alternative to a short spell in prison than are the often invisible and make work arrangements which characterise some existing community service placements.

Of course safeguards would be needed and the approach should be piloted. But it offers the prospect of a penalty which provides compensation as well as punishment, thereby increasing the incentive of the courts to impose it, the victim to endorse it and the wider community to support it.

Next week the UN General Assembly will spend a day considering what can be done to strengthen the rule of law across the globe. The agenda will be self evidently high level, looking no doubt at matters such as how to combat impunity at an international level and the importance of transitional justice in post conflict countries.

Member states will probably be encouraged to improve access to justice for the poor, to ensure that courts operate independently of the government and take steps to curb corrupt practices among law enforcement agencies.  Giving proper attention to such weighty subjects may leave little time to consider prison reform.  But there are strong reasons to hope that addressing the situation of the nine million plus people behind bars is more than a footnote to the GA’s deliberations.

In the last week alone there have been reports of detention conditions in Chad tantamount to a death sentence, grotesque torture in Georgia’s prisons, and the buying and selling of room space in Indonesian jails.  Riots, hunger strikes and deadly fires are all too frequent with overcrowding and a pitifully low quality of life the norm for prisoners in many high income countries let alone poorer ones.

Why does all this matter? As the new British Justice Minister has said prison is not meant to be a place that people enjoy being in. Opinion polls in many countries suggest that majorities want governments to take a harder line on crime.

Prison reform is important for two reasons. Pragmatically since almost all prisoners will sooner or later return to live in society it’s in no ones interest for them to return further alienated and embittered. Inspectors last year found that the UK’s largest young offender prison   introduced some young people to gangs and a violent culture which they had not previously experienced.  But prison reform is important in principle too. Treating all people with dignity and respect is a cornerstone of civilised values. If exceptions are made, peaceful and ordered societies become harder to create with conflict, crime and violence more likely outcomes.It is ghastly paradox that places designed to enforce the rule of law are in large parts of the world themselves lawless.

So what should the UN do?   One possibility would be to create a Global Prison Reform Programme to assist the development of humane and effective penal policies and practices.  The Programme might aim for the kind of outcomes expected from Norway’s assistance to prison systems in Eastern Europe. To overcome challenges connected to growing prison populations and prison overcrowding; an increased application of alternatives to prison; a greater focus on vulnerable groups in prison and improved competences of both inmates and prison staff. Funds and technical assistance could be provided so that more of the excellent work undertaken by UN bodies to identify and collate good practices can be implemented in the field.

The torture in Georgia is a sobering reminder that countries with large levels of aid and assistance do not always get round to effective prison reform. But the outraged response from the public, that they will not tolerate such abuse is heartening. Let us hope that the General assembly have heard that and are prepared to act at a global level.

What might have been a depressing morning observing the arraignment Court in Newark New Jersey was anything but. Yes there was a parade parade of poor, ill educated and often mentally ill black and latino defendants, sometimes appearing in person, sometimes via video link from the county jail. Yes the offences for which they were charged, were petty and sometimes as in the case of “wandering” – a kind of trespass – questionable.

In fact what could simply have been a conveyor belt of meaningless processing was, in the hands of Judge Victoria Pratt, turned into an opportunity for defendants to make positive changes to their lives. Thanks to the New York based Centre for Court Innovation, Judge Pratt was able to send cases to a range of assessment, treatment and community service options provided by Newark Community Solutions,  established to help develop a more problem solving approach to people in conflict with the law.

A highly efficient “Resource Coordinator” reported to the judge on progress made by people already referred to the project. Most were fully compliant with their programmes, attending orientation or treatment readiness groups, doing unpaid work or writing a short essay.

Judge Pratt asked defendants directly about their experiences- what kind of animal had they envisaged themselves to be in the introductory group-work role-pplay and why – one thought of himself as a bird flying free, another pit bull dog protecting people. The Judge asked a why an appointment had been missed – a girlfriend had been shot and he had taken her to hospital, an explanation verified by the hospital record.  Yet another was late because he had trouble getting through the metal detector at the court because of all of his jewellery.  “Why did you come like that?”quipped the judge- “were you going on a date? Just bring yourself next time” she admonished firmly. When defendants read their essays or completed their programme the judge led the court in a round of applause.

Failures are  taken seriously too. A young man who had impressed the judge with his essay was none the less given additional days for missing an appointment.

The court ordered programmes are short – a number of days rather than weeks-and in themselves unlikely to turn round their clients deep seated problems. But upstairs a team of social workers use the time to link their clients into the longer term interventions – residential drug treatment, mental health or job finding- which can make a real difference. The authority of the court is important at the outset but longer term engagement is a matter for the individuals themselves. Those that complete the court ordered component will often receive a helping hand in the form of the annulment of outstanding fines – which otherwise make a fresh start an even more difficult proposition.

Some argue that the kind of problem solving approaches applied at Newark are a sticking plaster that lend spurious legitimacy to a  system that is fundamentally unjust in its treatment of the crimes of poverty and that much more radical reform is needed. Others argue that the impact on the use of imprisonment by initiatives like this is minimal.

It is true that Newark Community Solutions is limited to low level offences and that a problem solving approach for more serious cases or more persistent offenders remains untested – thanks largely to the overwhelming demand for  punishment which though a little milder in recent years, still shapes the response of courts in the US and many other places of the world.

But almost all of the people appearing before Judge Pratt were grateful to her and to the social workers for the chance they had been given. At the very least there is here a prototype of a more rational and humane system of criminal justice.

Earlier this week, Justice and Prisons took part in a roundtable hosted by the Open Society Institute in New York on the subject of data and criminal justice reform- and in particular how collecting statistical information can improve the quality of pre trial justice.

The meeting heard presentations about the development of indicators to measure justice in post conflict countries, audits of case-flow through justice processes in Zambia and Malawi and a planned survey of the extent of excessive pre trial detention in 17 Eastern European countries. Participants described an evaluation of paralegal interventions in police stations in Sierra Leone and analysis of the length of pre trial detention in Nigeria.

A number of lessons emerged. First, that crude measurements of the proportion of the prison population which comprise pre trial detainees actually tell us very little- and in some cases may be misleading. Some states with apparently low proportions may hold detainees in police cells rather than prisons, thereby excluding them from the count. Moreover, countries which succeed in increasing the use of non custodial sentences or reducing sentence lengths will find, all else being equal that the proportion in pre trial detention on any one day will grow.

Second there is a need for much more fine grained analysis of how justice processes work in practice than is usually available from auditing exercises. International norms say that pre trial detention should be used as a last resort. Assessing whether it is used in this way requires a picture of how courts make remand decisions – something which is hard to obtain even in high-income data-rich countries.

We need to know why courts are remanding defendants to custody – is it a risk of flight or interference with justice or is it a consideration of further offending , public protection or even to protect the defendant himself? Only then can proper thought be given to designing appropriate strategies for reform. These might include changes to law, policy or practice and include the introduction or application of restrictive measures other than detention. In low income countries, where people in cities have no addresses or id cards the lack of traceability is of course a major obstacle to successful alternatives to incarceration. But it is not necessarily an insuperable one.

Justice and Prisons proposed that rather than attempting to address the problems of excessive pre trial detention in the round, a piece by piece approach is needed. An initial focus should be given to reducing the use of pre trial detention for those charged with the most minor of offences. In some countries of sub-Saharan Africa, bye law infractions,  arrests for being drunk , and accusations of being a rogue or vagabond  account for large numbers of arrests and remands  Working to keep such cases out of the system is likely to prove more saleable to public and politicians than more serious ones.

Increasing access to legal advice and assistance in such cases has an important role to play but a more radical agenda including advocacy aimed at keeping such cases away from criminal justice altogether could be important too. Forging links with non state justice systems could be part of the answer. But in finding that answer – and generating the information needed to do so, there is a need for local civil society – including universities in low income countries- to play a much greater role than they do currently. Through regular access to criminal justice institutions, they could be well placed to analyse the range of data dispersed through the court and prison systems. Without such systematic information gathering efforts, reform interventions will continue  to be poorly targeted and inadequately monitored.

One of the current trends in criminal justice thinking is what’s known as procedural justice.  One of its leading advocates American Professor Tom Tyler is in the UK this week to talk about the way the police and courts deal with people in reaching a decision about them may produce consequences at least as important as the nature of the decisions they reach. Even if the outcome is negative, people who feel they have been treated fairly in their dealings with the authorities rate those authorities as more legitimate than those whose encounters have been unsatisfactory.

In turn, those who accept authority are more likely to obey the law and in the case of those who do not are more likely to comply with court orders, pay fines and meet other obligations. They are also it seems more likely to desist from crime.

The latest round of the European Social Survey has collected data about trust in justice in 20 countries. The Nordic countries are most trusting of their police and courts (although the data was collected before the Breivik massacre in which the police have admitted serious shortcomings).  Eastern and some Southern European countries tend to be less trusting of their justice institutions. Two thirds of Russians think that the police make fair and impartial decisions “not at all or not very often” compared to one in ten Danes. The UK is somewhere in the middle of the league tables. More than half of Portuguese think that ethnic minorities face discrimination in the courts compared to just over a quarter in the Netherlands and one in five from Estonia.

Addressing corruption, discrimination and rights violations must be a clear priority for criminal justice agencies. But even where progress is made, increased legitimacy is not guaranteed. In general, US police forces have become increasingly professional since the Rodney King disaster but reductions in violence and corruption have not led to increased trust.  People tend to feel they have been treated fairly if they are shown respect, can have their say and perceive the police or courts to be neutral and trustworthy.    In the US, UK and other countries far too many people particularly young people from minority ethnic groups do not have these experiences.

In prisons around the world, procedural justice is often in short supply. In the European region at least the Council of Europe’s new Code of Ethics provides a basis for policies on the recruitment, training and management of prison staff. While conditions in prisons in many other parts of the world are significantly less favourable than in Europe, the approach of prison staff  everywhere should include the key principles in the Code. Prison staff should be accountable for their actions, show integrity, respect human dignity, offer care and assistance and cooperate with other agencies – all carried out with fairness, impartiality and non discrimination.

Not only is this the right thing for prison staff to do, procedural justice suggests it produces important pay offs in terms of how prisoners comply while in prison and also how they behave when released.

This week is due to see the opening of what will be the UK’s largest prison, the 1605 place Oakwood near Wolverhampton. Originally intended to be one of three so called Titan jails the capacity was scaled back from 2,500 after the last Government eventually bowed to widespread concerns about the desirability and safety of such large establishments.  But the medium security prison, when fully operational in the autumn will still fly in the face of evidence that smaller prisons work better than large ones.

Controversial too is the fact that the prison will be run by a private security company, G4S who were awarded the 15 year contract last year, bringing to six the number of prisons they run in England and Wales, alongside three secure training centres for juveniles.   It is twenty years since G4S won the first private prison contract in England in 1992.

Originally a conservative policy, prison privatisation was originally seen as “morally repugnant”  by Labour’s Jack Straw who  promised  to end the experiment and take back into the public service privatised prisons as soon as contractually possible. Once in government however, Labour embraced and extended privatisation such that when the current Justice Secretary announced the award of the Oakwood contract to G4S last year he could agree with his current Labour shadow in Parliament to leave aside “stale ideology and dogma, and instead look at what works and what produces the right solutions for the public.”

Internationally a number of countries refuse to countenance privatisation on grounds of principle, most commonly that imprisonment is a core state activity that cannot be delegated. The Israeli Supreme Court has recently upheld this view on the basis that  the  violations of human rights inherent in imprisonment should only be exercised by the state.  Leaving aside such matters of principle, what is the state of evidence about private prisons? Justice and Prisons is currently working with the World Bank to produce a knowledge brief about the global picture.

In the UK, the performance of privately run prison establishments seems to span the range from excellent to dismal. A recent evaluation found huge variations in the quality of private prisons, “so a superior quality from private sector provision should not be assumed- in particular if privatisation is done on the cheap.”

More surprising perhaps is that in the UK at least, private prisons do not seem thus far to have cost significantly less than public ones. While much of the data is shrouded in commercial confidence, the costs of private prisons per place have often been higher than public sector prisons, presumably because profits have offset lower staffing and pension costs. Competition may have driven costs of imprisonment down across the board, but the price for this in private prisons  may have been the “institutional meanness” found by inspectors at Serco run Doncaster in 2005 where many prisoners lacked pillows, adequate mattresses, toilet seats, working televisions, notice-boards and places to store belongings- presumably because the contract did not specifically require these.

Oakwood it seems will be operating on a dramatically reduced operating budget compared to other private and public prisons – £11,000 per prisoner per year, against an average of £27,400 per prisoner per year. This sixty per cent  lower cost, the government assures us,  does not come with an impoverished regime – the specification for the prison requires standards as high as those in existing prisons.  Economies of scale no doubt account for some of the cost savings and it is possible that G4S are running the prison as something a loss leader.

If the cost comparison is a genuine one, it is hard to see how such reduced resources cannot have some adverse consequences on prisoners. For their sake one hopes that this is not the case, and that through innovation, technology and good management Oakwood is able to deliver more effective outcomes and better value for money for the taxpayer. But if that is the case, we are entitled to ask the two former heads of the UK prison system who now advise G4S ,why they did not introduce such innovation and reform in the public service they formerly led?

The judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in upholding the extradition of terrorist suspects from the UK to the USA contains damaging implications for the idea of international standards in the use and practice of imprisonment.  The Court’s finding that the likely detention conditions and length of sentences for the five alleged terrorists  would not amount to ill-treatment gives a seal of approval to an approach to imprisonment fundamentally at odds with human rights and civilised values.

The carefully argued judgement has been widely welcomed on many sides, some expected, some less so. Human rights lawyer Lord Lester called it wise and sensible, hoping perhaps that it will go some way to meet growing criticism of the court as a criminals’ charter and demands that the UK withdraw from its jurisdiction. But by endorsing the use of mandatory life sentences without parole and highly repressive regimes in maximum security, the court has overridden two key principles that should govern the use and practice of prison.

First that in the words of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights   “the penitentiary system shall comprise treatment of prisoners the essential aim of which shall be their reformation and social rehabilitation.”. And second in the words of the Council of Europe’s Recommendation on Life and Long Term Prisoners “prison life should be arranged so as to approximate as closely as possible to the realities of life in the community”.

While the challenges of holding terrorist detainees and prisoners can require the application of specific measures and restrictions, these should self evidently not be such as to subvert the underlying approach to imprisonment.

On conditions of detention, the Court found little or no problem with the restrictions in place at the Colorado supermax prison, ADX Florence, likely to house the defendants.  The court accepted that inmates are confined to their cells for the vast majority of the time, apart from ten hours a week in an individualised recreation area about 3.66 metres by 6 metres.

The restrictions are eased by “a great deal of in-cell stimulation   through television and radio channels, frequent newspapers, books, hobby and craft items and educational programming.” In the court’s view “the range of activities and services provided goes beyond what is provided in many prisons in Europe”. The press release accompanying the judgement goes further claiming the services and activities on offer are beyond what is provided in most prisons in Europe.

The Court’s view let alone that of its press office is potentially highly misleading. There may be more in the way of TV channels and newspapers on offer in the ADX than is  the norm in Europe. But far greater too is the level of restriction of liberty inherent in the regime. The Court accepted evidence about what happens in the facility from the Prison itself and from the Department of Justice.   It rejected competing evidence from the Civil Rights Clinic at the University of Denver which painted an altogether bleaker picture, quoting a former warden’s assessment of the ADX as “a clean version of hell.”

In the absence of any independent monitoring, something to which the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture   attaches particular importance, an objective assessment of the reality of life in ADX – surely essential to reaching a proper finding – is difficult to make.

The Court seems reassured  that  the services provided by ADX are supplemented by regular telephone calls (two a month in the basic regime ) and social visits (five a month) and by the ability of inmates, even those under special administrative measures, to correspond with their families.

The language is telling. These are supplementary privileges not rights and ones which in the case of these defendants may be of limited practical value.   The CPT emphasises   the need for flexibility as regards the application of rules on visits and telephone contacts for prisoners whose families live far away thereby rendering regular visits impracticable. Are ADX prisoners allowed to accumulate visiting time or offered improved possibilities for telephone contacts with their families?   We do not know and the Court appears not to have asked.

It is not disputed the purpose of the regime at the ADX is to prevent all physical contact between an inmate and others, and to minimise social interaction between inmates and staff. Such a purpose seems in total contradiction to the norms set out in the Council of Europe’s recommendations on prison management. These say for example that the maintenance of control in prison should be based on the use of dynamic security – the development by staff of positive relationships with prisoners based on firmness and fairness, in combination with an understanding of their personal situation and any risk posed by individual prisoners.

They also say that regimes in maximum security units should aim to have a relaxed atmosphere, allow association between prisoners, freedom of movement within the unit and offer a range of activities. In a very strange finding, the Court takes the view that   there are adequate opportunities for interaction between inmates at ADX . “While inmates are in their cells talking to other inmates is possible, admittedly only through the ventilation system.”

As the Council of Europe has agreed, the imperatives of the fight against terrorism may require that a person deprived of his liberty for terrorist activities be submitted to more severe restrictions than those applied to other prisoners. But overriding this is the requirement that a person deprived of his liberty for terrorist activities must in all circumstances be treated with due respect for human dignity.

It is not at all clear that the regime at ADX provides that due respect. It would be unfortunate to say the least if as a result if this judgement, the repressive regime in use there becomes a model for prison management elsewhere in the world.

As the world marks International Women’s Day 2012, it is now over a year since the UN General Assembly   adopted new rules for the treatment of women prisoners and for non-custodial measures for women offenders.  The Bangkok Rules were drawn up in response to the recognition of the particularly deleterious impact of imprisonment on women and the children of imprisoned women, and the need for specific standards.

In some countries, women and girls are imprisoned for “moral crimes” such as running away from home, often to escape domestic violence or because they are forced into prostitution. Despite considerable international support for women’s prisons in Afghanistan for example, after release there is often little hope of safety and security let alone a positive environment for women and their children.
Concerns are not limited to the poorest of conflict affected countries. In the United Kingdom, it is four years since a major review -the Corston report- became the latest in a long line of reports to recommend restricting the use of imprisonment for women and radical reform of women’s prisons. Since then the number of women in prison in England and Wales has reduced a little which is certainly a positive step but imprisonment still produces very poor outcomes. More than half  of women leaving prison are reconvicted within one year – for those serving sentences of less than 12 months  it is almost two third. This ineffective and often damaging experience is inflicted on the very vulnerable. Nearly 40% of women in prison have attempted suicide at one time in their lives and over half have suffered domestic violence.

Prisons have a negative impact on women in almost every part of the globe. On the day that the world calls for increased justice for women and celebrates the contribution which they make, there is a particular need to remember the injustice, violence and harm inflicted on women who pass through criminal justice systems. It is an opportunity for urgent international action to make real the standards found in the Bangkok Rules.