Over the past decade 97 women have died in prisons in England and Wales, as incidents of self-harm among female prisoners reach the highest level on record, a new report has found. Inquest, the charity that produced the report, collated Ministry of Justice (MoJ) figures since 2015 to arrive at a total number of deaths. It said the numbers were evidence for its case that all women's prisons should be closed.
I am proud of the Prison Reform Omnibus bill that passed at the end of session. New York's prisons have been plagued by a systemic pattern of violence toward incarcerated individuals, with little accountability or oversight. Within the last year, correction officers murdered two incarcerated men. The civil rights of incarcerated New Yorkers are routinely violated. The situation in our state's prisons is an emergency. This bill is a crucial step toward ending this violence.
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
"I could sit and talk football with anybody every day of the week and I believe it would be quite an informed discussion. "Sitting with politicians, it's probably not my strongest skillset, but where I see the value for me is prison reform. "I've got lived, real-life experience of spending time in prison, coming out, being rehabilitated. And I feel I've got quite an educated opinion on the prison system from being in it and living in it."
Inmates at an infamous high-security military prison in Chile, which houses the perpetrators of dictatorship-era human rights crimes, are set to lose their privileged conditions under plans to incorporate the prison into the public prison network. President Gabriel Boric announced on Monday that Punta Peuco is being transformed into a regular prison to help deal with overcrowding in the penitentiary system.
Thomas White, who is serving an abolished indefinite jail term described by the United Nations as psychological torture, developed paranoid schizophrenia and psychosis in prison as he lost hope of being freed from his Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence. Last year, The Independent revealed how he had set himself on fire in his cell as this newspaper backed his family in their six-year battle for him to be transferred for inpatient mental health treatment.
When I got on that roof, I was absolutely desperate, thinking I was going to die, he said. I'd been asking for help for days. I wasn't trying to hurt anyone, I just needed to escape and feel safe in a system that makes that almost impossible. That moment was the only way I felt I could survive.
I think that frankly - I mean - what purpose do they serve? I think that we have to ask ourselves that. Many defend the carceral state for their own feelings, not its reality.
A cockroach-infested jail which illegally detained prisoners for longer than their release date has been put into special measures by a watchdog, exposing critical failures in the prison system.
Tracking devices inserted under offenders' skin, robots assigned to contain prisoners, and driverless vehicles were proposed to ministers by tech companies to address the UK's justice crisis.
"While much of our work addresses concerns around service delivery, many of the issues that we encounter go far beyond mere inefficiencies. They raise profound questions about fundamental human rights."
The number of prison staff being investigated for sexual assault or harassment has surged almost 400 per cent over recent years, revealing a serious issue within the prison system.
