Periodic Reporting for period 5 - PRILA (Prisons: the Rule of Law, Accountability and Rights)
Reporting period: 2022-04-01 to 2022-12-31
Accountability is fundamental to the rule of law in prisons and a just and effective European prison system. International human rights law places a great deal of trust in, and emphasis on, inspection, monitoring and complaints procedures as ways to protect human rights and prevent ill-treatment in prisons. This project, Prisons: the rule of law, accountability, and rights (PRILA) examines the legal framework and, through comparative legal analysis, questions whether there is a distinctively European approach to the regulation of prisons.
PRILA also seeks to understand how prison staff and people in prison feel about the inspection, monitoring and oversight of prisons. The project also explores how staff of bodies such as prison inspectorates, Ombudsmen, complaints bodies and prison monitors feel about and experience their work.
The project examines what kinds of accountability mechanisms for prisons exist, and what the effects of them are. PRILA will also examine how a visit from an international monitoring body to a prison is experienced.
It is important for us to understand more about how accountability, inspection and oversight works in the prison context. These systems are designed to protect the rights of everybody in the prison system, and to uphold the public interest in prisons being run in a just and safe manner. It is also important to make sure that our laws and regulations in Europe for these mechanisms are the best they can be. It is especially important to make sure that European standards are world-class.
PRILA helps us to understand:
1. How prisoners experience accountability structures, and rights;
2. How prison managers and prison officers/guards experience monitoring and external scrutiny;
3. How staff of bodies like Ombudsmen and inspectorates experience their work, and challenges in their work;
4. How a visit from an inspection and monitoring body is experienced;
5. What kinds of accountability structures exist in European prisons;
6. How types of accountability structures are related to other indicators of penal regimes, such as prison overcrowding; and
7. Whether there is a distinctive European way for accountability in prisons, by comparing European law with that of the United States and other jurisdictions.
The PRILA research team has completed interviews and surveys with prisoners in Ireland, finding out about their experiences of inspection, complaints and access to the courts. It has also completed interviews with senior prison staff and started interviews with frontline prison staff, asking them about their experiences of the complaints procedures, visits from inspection and monitoring bodies, and the role of the courts. PRILA has completed this work now also in Germany, and is noting interesting differences between the approaches, finding that the more formalized and longer-embedded systems for complaint resolution in Germany appear to mean that staff are more comfortable with such structures. Results of our work in Ireland have been published in the European Journal of Criminology.
PRIILA has also conducted the very first survey of all (then) EU28 countries to find out what oversight bodies exist for prisons in Europe. This work provides the first insights into the types of structures which exist, and notes that most EU countries have signed and ratified OPCAT. Compliance with all provisions of OPCAT is, however, more patchy. We also see some evidence that countries which comply with some central features of OPCAT tend to comply with its other provisions. Results of this work have been published in the New Journal of European Criminal Law.
PRILA was also the first research project ever to observe a visit from the CPT in real time. This groundbreaking work involved hours of observation, interviews and surveys with people in prison, prison staff, prison managers, and senior officials associated with the visit of the CPT to Ireland in 2019.
PRILA has also produced briefing papers for people in prison and staff, and hosted an international workshop on domestic and international oversight in April 2020.
Key outcomes:
1. PRILA will create a new kind of scholarship: accountability work in prisons and its effects.
2. PRILA will create the first comprehensive account of how external mechanisms of oversight affect penal power and penal legitimacy.
3. PRILA seeks to improve how the rule of law applies in prisons, help to improve policy, and create more just and effective prison systems.
4. Dissemination through academic channels and to policymakers, prison staff and prisoners through briefing papers, workshops, and final conference.
It is very important to the research team that the findings are made accessible to prison staff, people in prison, staff of oversight bodies, policymakers and the public. This is critical as prisons play a crucial role in fulfilling and advancing the public interest in protecting rights, promoting the rule of law and ensuring our prisons are run as well as they can be. PRILA looks forward to publishing briefing papers on its work, and to hosting workshops and a conference to bring its findings to a variety of audiences.