Acknowledgments

This report is based on visits to seven of Jordan's 10 prisons for men, and Jordan’s one prison for women, between August 2007 and April 200, and seven meetings with Jordanian officials between July 2005 and January 2009. Christoph Wilcke of the Middle East and North Africa Division (MENA) and Farida Deif, formerly of the Women’s Rights Division (WRD) at Human Rights Watch researched and wrote this report.

We express our appreciation to officials in the Ministry of Interior and the Public Security Department for facilitating our prison visits and discussing the application of the Crime Prevention Law. We also thank the Jordanian lawyers and former officials who shed further light on the law’s implementation and legal interpretation. Finally, we are grateful to those detainees who shared their personal experiences with us.

Joe Stork, MENA’s deputy director, and Liesl Gerntholtz, WRD director, provided the initial review for this report. Ian Gorvin, senior program officer in the Program Office, further edited the report. Clive Baldwin, senior legal advisor, provided legal review. Amr Khairy, Arabic language website and translation coordinator, provided assistance with translation into Arabic. Brent Giannotta and Nadia Barhoum, associates for the Middle East and North Africa Division, prepared this report for publication. Additional production assistance was provided by Grace Choi, director of publications, and Fitzroy Hepkins, mail manager.