Search Results for: prison overcrowding

Christopher Newton, St. John's University School of Law

Amnesty International (AI) on Thursday urged California authorities to end "shocking conditions" in high-security prison isolation units. In a report entitled "The Edge of Endurance: Conditions in California's Security Housing Units," AI examined...

JURIST Guest Columnist Katherine Todrys of the Health and Human Rights Division of Human Rights Watch recounts her experiences researching disease transmission and living standards in African prisons. She calls for sweeping criminal justice reforms to address the systemic problems...

California officials have expressed doubt about the state's ability to comply with a court order to reduce its prison populations by 2013. California prison officials had asked the court to allow them to retain 6,000 more inmates...

A Canadian federal court judge on Tuesday ordered a judicial review of the nation's prison grievance system. Justice Anne Mactavish for the Federal Court of Canada held that the backlog in the grievance system is...

The Colombia Ministry of Justice on Friday announced a new initiative to solve the problem of overcrowding in the nation's prisons. INPEC , Colombia's prison institute, has begun the transfer of 800 inmates [Columbia...

The North Gauteng High Court at Pretoria in South Africa on Thursday convicted of high treason the leader of an extremist group responsible for nine bombings in Johannesburg's Soweto township in 2002. Mike du Toit, leader of the white...

Syrian authorities have been maintaining secret detention facilities to hold and torture prisoners, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Tuesday. The report, compiled based on accounts from victims and former military and intelligence officials,...

Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza on Thursday announced that the government will release prisoners in order to address the overcrowding in national prisons. At the end of May the number of prisoners was around 10,000 detained in 11...

UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kyung-wha Kang on Thursday urged the government of Malawi to improve its human rights conditions and promote accountability in the country. In particular, Kang expressed concern about the...