Category Archives: Business and Law

The World Prison Brief: database of global imprisonment levels

Leave a reply

This post was contributed by Roy Walmsley, Director of the International Centre for Prison Studies’ world-renowned World Prison Brief. In November ICPS was merged with the Institute for Criminal Policy Research in Birkbeck’s School of Law.

iStock_000012313253XLargeThe aim of the World Prison Brief (WPB) is to enable more well-informed discussion about appropriate levels of imprisonment and about issues such as the use of imprisonment for women, the use of pre-trial imprisonment and the problems of prison overcrowding; and to contribute to the making of sound evidence-based decisions by all who are endeavouring to improve prison systems worldwide.

The WPB was launched in September 2000. It contributes to the knowledge base on the use of imprisonment by giving details of prison population levels in over 220 independent countries and dependent territories. It shows the variations in practice in different countries, regions and continents and makes it possible to estimate the world prison population total (over 10 million). It also gives information on the proportion of pre-trial, female, juvenile and foreign prisoners in the total, as well as on the official capacity of each prison system and its occupancy rate, thus indicating the level of overcrowding. Recent trends in prison population levels are also shown.

The information comes from a variety of sources, principally the national prison administration, the Ministry responsible for the prison administration or the national statistical office. So these are official figures and they are obtained from publications by these bodies (including annual reports and data on official websites), direct communication with contacts in the prison administrations, responses of these bodies to international surveys etc. Sometimes information comes via a third party (e.g. an international body or a non-governmental organisation) and such material is used when the source is established as reliable and the data consistent with what is already known about prison population levels in the country concerned. Information is collected on an ongoing basis and the website is updated monthly with data obtained during the previous month.

It is essential that the information should be as reliable as possible. This is of course dependent first of all on the reliability of the data published by the official bodies in the countries concerned. In practice the main difficulty encountered – apart from the fact that so many countries do not publish prison population numbers, or do so only rarely – is incompleteness of data. This can result, for example, from the omission in some countries of figures for a part of their country that is separately administered and in other countries the omission of data on persons whose pre-trial detention occurs in police facilities instead of prisons. When this is known to be occurring the WPB draws attention to it alongside the official figures.

Ensuring the reliability of data also depends on validating it carefully. Newspaper reports quite often quote a prison department or Ministry official giving a figure that is obviously wrong. All new figures are compared with data previously recorded in order to minimise the chances of mistaken information appearing in the WPB.

The WPB is the only source of comparative data on prison systems worldwide and is regularly quoted in briefings by Governments, by inter-governmental bodies such as the OHCHR, UNESCO and OECD, by NGOs and pressure groups, in academic articles and journals and in the media.

Academics use  the data in the WPB to explore policies that lead to higher or lower rates of imprisonment  issue, and politicians, NGOs and think tanks use the data in arguments against the introduction of policies that will lead to a higher rate of imprisonment relative to comparable countries.

That the WPB is considered relevant in prison policy-making circles around the world is evident from the fact that the comparative figures appear in prison administration annual reports in many countries. There is widespread sensitivity to the ranking position in which a country is shown to be, particularly in comparison with its nearer neighbours.

Sometimes it is clear that national policy is quite directly being influenced; governments occasionally send up-to-date figures so as to demonstrate that their situation has improved – numbers have come down – since the figure that the WPB was showing. One government has developed a project to introduce reforms that are designed, in the words of their published report, ‘to eliminate their country from the 50 that are leading in terms of prison population’.

The WPB has, therefore, affected the discourse on the use of imprisonment among governments, academics, NGOs and think tanks. The ability to compare a country’s prison population level with that of its neighbours, the rest of its continent and the rest of the world has caused administrations to think more deeply about their own use of imprisonment.

Judicial Images

Leave a reply

This post was contributed by Professor Leslie J Moran, of Birkbeck’s School of Law.

1st October 2009, the opening day of the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. Judges of the Supreme Court dressed in their gilded ceremonial robes of office negotiate their way through a group of pedestrians as they process from the Court to Westminster Abbey to attend the Judges Service to celebrate the opening of the new legal year. © Leslie J Moran 2014.

1st October 2009, the opening day of the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. Judges of the Supreme Court dressed in their gilded ceremonial robes of office negotiate their way through a group of pedestrians as they process from the Court to Westminster Abbey to attend the Judges Service to celebrate the opening of the new legal year. © Leslie J Moran 2014.

How about drawing me a picture of a judge? Use your mind’s eye; make a mental picture. What is in your picture? What is the judge’s pose? How is the judge dressed? Are there any props? If so what are they? Now take a moment to reflect. What is being represented? If you showed the picture to a friend, colleague or fellow commuter and asked, ‘What does this represent?’ what would be the reply? What does your picture say about the qualities of a good judge? Or maybe you have produced a picture that portrays some of the common criticism of judges: ‘pale, male and stale’, remote, stuffy, out of touch, and out of date. Where did you get the ideas and images from? How accurate are they? I hope this exercise has given you a little food for thought.

It is an exercise that is intended to draw you into the heart of a new research initiative at Birkbeck entitled Judicial Images; image making, management and consumption. Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the goal is to build a network of people who work in the media and culture industries, the judges and their media advisors who commission and manage them, together with scholars from a variety of disciplines, including art history, film and television studies, sociology and cultural studies, from the UK and beyond to study judicial images. It is a pioneering initiative that builds on my research into the judiciary. If the study of pictures sounds distinctly out of place when it comes to research on the judiciary the message of this initiative is, it’s time to think again.

The network will examine the power of visual images to communicate ideas about judges and the justice system past, present and future. The power of pictures is not a recent discovery here. Sculptures and painted portraits of judges have been produced and displayed since at least the 16th century. In the Victorian era small photographic portraits of judges were collected and arranged in albums with other celebrity figures of the day. Today it’s all about the moving image; film and television portraits in documentaries, news reports and courtroom dramas such as G.F. Newman’s highly acclaimed Judge John Deed.

This is a very timely initiative. As of October 2013, the English courts opened their doors to the television cameras. They are currently confined to the Court of Appeal. ‘Open justice’ and ‘public education’ jockey for position as arguments justifying calls for TV cameras in criminal trial courts. But TV is already awash with news stories and fictional accounts – courtroom dramas, that touch on the work of judges. But fictions are often cast as second best. Reality is the thing. The specter of declining standards of journalism and tabloid television and press reports that value sensationalism over accuracy haunts debates about better public access to news of what goes on in courts. Concerns continue to be expressed about the impact of media on popular misconceptions about the way courts work and the role of the judge. Pictures of judges dressed in gilded or scarlet robes wearing silk stockings, court shoes and 18th-century full-bottomed wigs regularly accompany news reports critical of judicial decisions, especially so called ‘lenient’ sentences. The worry is that they not only misrepresent today’s judges but that they feed and breed dissatisfaction with, and loss of confidence in, the judiciary.

But there has been little research exploring how these images are commissioned and made or how they are used. The network is designed to change that. Three workshops (the first in November 2014) will facilitate new encounters, open up new conversations, and expose participants to new perspectives. The workshops provide a unique opportunity for us to explore the complex processes that go into judicial image-making and image management. These events will be designed to encourage critical reflection about current images. What messages are being produced? What gets left out? How may these images be changed, improved? What can be done to enhance popular perceptions and understandings about the justice system and the role of the judge?

A dedicated website will support the whole project. In addition to providing information about the project events the website will also offer a bibliography of key sources for interested members of the public, policy makers, and budding researchers. It will also provide new educational resources.

The website also hosts an exhibition. This will be made up of a variety of pictures of judges, some of which I have made during the course of my judicial research (See image above). Others will be from important collections such as the National Portrait Gallery. We also hope to inspire people to make pictures, for example by using Instagram.

So don’t delay. Add the finishing touches to your picture. If it’s still a mental one, get out the paper and make a hard copy. If it’s already on paper turn it into a pdf or photograph it and send it in. My contact details are below.  A caption or accompanying commentary is optional. I can’t guarantee that it will make the exhibition. I’ll have to consult with my fellow researcher, Professor Linda Mulcahy once a colleague in the Law School at Birkbeck, now in the Department of Law at the London School of Economics. But I will do my best.

What I can guarantee is that the exercise will have made you think about one of society’s most important institutions. It will also have made you think about the importance of visual media in shaping your understanding of the judiciary.

Leslie J Moran is a Professor in the Law School at Birkbeck. You can contact him for more information about the project or to send your pictures via his email address: l.moran@bbk.ac.uk. Follow the Judicial Images project on Twitter.

Punitive Laws Undermine HIV Prevention Efforts

2 Replies

Some 34 million people globally are living with HIV.  Since 1981, when the first cases of what we came to know as AIDS were diagnosed in the United States, more than 60 million people have been infected and more than 30 million have died from AIDS-related causes.  The most recent data indicate that more than two million people a year are newly infected worldwide, the vast majority of these in the resource poor countries of the South, especially those of sub-Saharan Africa.  In Western and Central Europe there are some one million people living with HIV, of which approximately 100,000 are in the UK (with a quarter of these unaware of their HIV positive status).

It is a tragic indication of the impact that HIV and AIDS have had on our planet in the past thirty years that these morbidity, mortality and new infection figures represent something of an improvement.  The rate of new infections has fallen by almost a fifth since 1999 and appears to be levelling out; one-third of the 15 million people living with HIV in low- and middle-income countries have access to treatment.  Consequently, the number of deaths is falling, and the number of people living with HIV is stabilising.  To this extent the global AIDS response has been a success, and for this we should acknowledge not only the financial resources countries and individuals have made available, but the invaluable contribution of scientists, healthcare workers, academics, civil society organisations, international bodies such as UNAIDS and the World Health Organization and – most importantly of all – people living with, and affected by, HIV.  Without the concerted effort and dedication of all these actors and activists the individual, social and economic impact of the virus would be even more catastrophic than it has been.

Ruins-1000x55-logo-6Central to the success of these efforts has been the recognition that our response to HIV and AIDS must be informed by human rights principles, including the fundamental right to non-discrimination and the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.  HIV impacts disproportionately on those who are stigmatised, marginalised or who lack economic or social capital (men who have sex with men, women and girls, sex workers, migrants and displaced people, injecting drug users).  Prevention efforts, and access to treatment and care, will only be successful if those most at risk of infection, or already living with HIV, are given – and experience – the respect and support to which they are entitled as of right, without judgement.

Despite this, governments across the world persist in introducing, implementing and enforcing punitive and coercive laws which reinforce stigma and popular misconceptions.  One of the most egregious examples of this in recent years was the introduction by Greece’s Minister of Health of a law which resulted in the detention and forcible HIV testing of hundreds of women in Athens alleged to have been sex workers.   Those who tested HIV positive were charged with a range of serious offences (most of which were subsequently dropped or reduced), detained in inhumane conditions and had their photographs published in the national media.  The law that permitted this was unnecessary, disproportionate. and resulted in a gross violation of the right to respect for private life.  Introduced immediately before the hotly contested and contentious Greek elections of May 2012, many commentators suggested that the measure was a cynical gesture that played to populist sentiment in times of austerity.  It was condemned by national groups and activists, and by international organisations and health experts and was repealed in May 2013.  In July, however, it was reinstated – with the support of the Greek Centre for Disease Control, and to the dismay of those who thought reason had triumphed over prejudice.   The President of the International AIDS Society, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi (a co-discoverer of HIV), speaking at the Society’s conference in Kuala Lumpur this summer expressed her clear disappointment:

“As President of the IAS I strongly condemn this move and urge the Greek Government to rethink its position. HIV infections are already increasing in Greece due to the economic crisis and a mandatory policy of detainment and testing will only fuel the epidemic there.”

As yet, however, there seems to be no rethinking, and new infections in Greece increase at a rate significantly higher than elsewhere in the EU.

RUINS-poster-EN-web1Ruins, a documentary by Zoe Mavroudi about the Greek law and its impact on the women who were rounded up in 2012, had its UK première at Birkbeck on Friday 18th October, supported by the Birkbeck Gender & Sexuality (BiGS).  In it, Mavroudi shows the way in which economic austerity, fear and ignorance combined to produce a toxic cocktail which not only blighted the lives of individuals but has done serious harm to HIV prevention work in her country.  It is an important and timely reminder of the work that still needs to be done in combating HIV-related prejudice, and of the profoundly negative impact that punitive laws can have in the field of public health.

 

Professor Matthew Weait

Matthew Weait is Professor of Law and Policy at Birkbeck and Pro-Vice-Master (Academic Partnerships).  He has been a consultant to UNAIDS and the WHO and was a member of the Technical Advisory Group of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law (UNDP).  He co-founded the River House Law Clinic, which provides free legal advice to people living with HIV, and which is supported by student volunteers from the School of Law.  An article on this theme, “Unsafe law: Health, rights and the legal response to HIV”, based on his inaugural lecture, will be published in the International Journal of Law in Context in December 2013.

Experiences of Court

2 Replies

Researchers Jessica Jacobson, Gillian Hunter and Amy Kirby from the Institute for Criminal Policy Research (ICPR), School of Law at Birkbeck discuss their recently completed study about the experiences of victims, witnesses and defendants at the Crown Court. Follow them: @ICPRtweet 

exp_of_court

Our study was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. We wanted to understand what it is like to appear in court as victim, witness or defendant and what factors determine whether proceedings are seen as fair and legitimate by the participants.

We conducted fieldwork at two Crown Courts and our findings were gathered primarily through interviews with victims, defendants and witnesses, supplemented by observations of trials and sentencing hearings and interviews with court staff, judges and barristers. By these means, we assessed victims’, defendants’ and witnesses’ comprehension of court proceedings, how fair they perceived the proceedings to be, how respectfully they felt they were treated by the courts, and the significance they accorded to proceedings.

Legitimacy of the court

We tend to think of the court as a place where ‘what really happened’ is established. In fact, court proceedings are a highly ritualised process of managing conflict between alleged wrongdoers and those allegedly wronged, in which the ‘truth’ often remains unknown and unknowable.

Attending court can be terrifying, humiliating, upsetting or frustrating; and many aspects of the process can be difficult to understand. Proceedings are often characterised by an intermingling of incongruous elements and a degree of chaos. And yet, the vast majority of witnesses, victims and defendants conform with the expectations and social rules of the process. This reluctant conformity seems to reflect an implicit belief in the legitimacy of proceedings. Verdicts or sentences thought to be unfair can undermine, but tend not to erase, the perceived legitimacy of the court process.

Our work with Victim Support

The criminal justice system depends on cooperation of victims and witnesses to report crime, and to give evidence in court. How they are treated is likely to affect their confidence and trust in the system.

We describe victims’ and witnesses’ experiences of court in a report, published in July in collaboration with national victims’ charity, Victim Support. It shows the effectiveness of much existing provision for victims and witnesses in helping them feel valued and supported. This includes separate waiting areas, away from the defendant, court familiarisation visits and the Witness Service, whose staff and volunteers help explain procedures and accompany witnesses to the courtroom. Overall, witnesses reported being treated respectfully but they found aspects of the court process frustrating, confusing and distressing.

Distress and anxiety

Most were anxious about coming face-to-face with the defendant or the possibility of reprisals for giving evidence. Despite this, they tended to come to court voluntarily, citing their motivation as sense of duty to protect others from becoming victims or to secure justice for themselves or for others.

Chance encounters with defendants did occur in the entrance to the court, in the smoking areas and the canteen, and were reported as one of the most distressing aspects of the witness experience.

Waiting

Waiting characterised much of the experience: lengthy waits for the case to come to court, then while at court to give evidence and sometimes for the sentence to be delivered. Witnesses were often given little warning to attend court or, conversely, late notice that a trial had been postponed; and they were not always told of the reasons for delays.

Understanding

Some did not understand the role of prosecution barrister, and thought he or she was acting on their behalf. This coupled with limited or no contact with the prosecution barrister heightened witnesses’ feelings of marginalisation and a sense that the defendant was getting a better deal.

Most nerves were reserved for cross-examination; the formal or legal language often posed difficulties and witnesses were appreciative of judges’ interventions to ensure they understood a barrister’s questioning or to prevent hostile or aggressive questioning.

Having your ‘day in court’

There was frustration about how their testimony or their story about what happened was inhibited by rules about admissibility of evidence or by the particular focus of the prosecution case.

What needs improving?

Respectful treatment makes the difficulties of coming to court more manageable, and helps reduce any sense of marginalisation. However, there is scope for support to be enhanced; for witnesses to be better informed about court processes, and to have their voices heard more clearly.