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THE PRISON PROJECT

The Human Rights Watch Prison Project was formed in 1987 to focus international attention on prison conditions worldwide. Drawing on the expertise of the regional divisions of Human Rights Watch, the Prison Project investigates conditions for sentenced prisoners, pre-trial detainees, and those held in police lockups. The project is distinctive in the international human rights field in that it examines conditions for all prisoners, not simply those held for political reasons.

In addition to pressing for improvement in prison conditions in particular countries, the project seeks to place the problem of prison conditions on the international human rights agenda. We believe that a government's claim to respect human rights should be assessed not only by the political freedoms it allows but also by how it treats its prisoners, including those not held for political reasons. Our experience has repeatedly shown that a number of democratic countries that are rarely or never a focus of human rights scrutiny are in fact guilty of serious human rights violations within their prisons.

The project has a self-imposed set of rules for prison visits: investigators undertake visits only when they, not the authorities, can choose the institutions to be visited; when the investigators can be confident that they will be allowed to talk privately with inmates of their choice; and when the investigators can gain access to the entire facility to be examined. These rules are adopted toavoid being shown model prisons or the most presentable parts of institutions. When access on such terms is not possible, reporting is based on interviews with former prisoners, prisoners on furlough, relatives of inmates, lawyers, prison experts and prison staff, and on documentary evidence. The project uses the U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners as the chief document with which to assess prison conditions in each country. Prison investigations are usually conducted by teams composed of a member of the Human Rights Watch staff with expertise on the country in question and a member of the Prison Project's advisory committee. Occasionally, the project invites an outside expert to participate in an investigation.

The project publishes its findings in book-length reports and in newsletters. These are released to the public and the press, both in the United States and in the country in question, and whenever possible, also in translation.

In previous years, the project conducted studies and published reports on prison conditions in Brazil, Czechoslovakia, India, Indonesia, Israel and the Occupied Territories, Jamaica, Mexico, Poland, Romania, the former Soviet Union, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the United States (including Puerto Rico, with a separate newsletter published).

The Global Report

The main focus of the project's work in 1993 was the Global Report on Prisons, produced for and released at the United Nations World Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna in June. The 340-page report, which reflected six years of investigations of prison conditions on five continents, included findings on pre-trial detention, physical conditions, classification of prisoners, women inmates, life on death row, activities, prison labor, availability of prison rules, disciplinary measures, beatings and physical abuse, aftermath of prison riots, contacts with the outside world and other issues. It also featured separate chapters on the prison systems of nineteen countries. The report concluded that the great majority of the millions of persons who are imprisoned worldwide at any given moment, and of the tens of millions who spend at least part of the year behind bars, are confined in conditions of filth and corruption, without adequate food or medical care, with little or nothing to do, and in circumstances in which violence-from other inmates, their keepers, or both-is a constant threat. Despite international declarations, treaties and standards forbidding such conditions, this state of affairs is tolerated even in countries that are more or less respectful of human rights, because prisons, by their nature, are out of sight, and because prisoners, by definition, are outcasts.

We also concluded that by and large, it is not possible for prisoners themselves to call attention to the abuses they suffer. Except for political prisoners, the great majority are not skilled in organizing or communicating; while in prison, they are cut off from the rest of the world, and once out of prison, they are eager to avoid continuing identification with prisons. Accordingly, it is up to others, acting out of a willingness to redress the suffering of their fellow human beings and a desire to uphold therule of law, to concern themselves with prisons. In the report, we urged our fellow human rights organizations to expand their mandates to include prison conditions.



The Enforcement of Standards

The U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners is the most widely known and accepted document regulating prison conditions. Unfortunately, these standards, although known to prison administrators virtually all over the world, are seldom fully enforced. To strengthen the enforcement of standards, in the Global Report the project recommended creating a U.N. human rights mechanism to inspect prisons and disseminate information about prison conditions and abuses. Throughout 1993, the project maintained contacts with U.N. bodies that concern themselves with prison matters. The project also urged U.S. representatives to these bodies to strengthen the human rights component of the U.N.'s work related to prisons. In November, a representative of the project traveled to the Netherlands to give a presentation at an international gathering of non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations working on devising methods to make existing standards on prison conditions work more effectively.

Fact-Finding

The project continued its fact-finding work and the publication of country-specific prison conditions reports throughout 1993.

In January and February, a representative of the project traveled to South Africa to continue the investigation started in 1992. Five prison complexes were visited in the course of this trip, including prisons in the "homeland" of Transkei. In addition, numerous ex-prisoners, prison guards and prison rights advocates were interviewed. A report based on this and the earlier research was planned for January 1994.

A book-length report on prison conditions in Egypt was published in February, based on investigations carried out in 1992. That investigation was the first time that any human rights organization had inspected Egyptian prisons.

In March and April, the project undertook an investigation of prison and police lockup conditions in Zaire. Our representative visited several prisons and detention camps, as well as police jails. The report that resulted from this mission was published in November.

The project's request to the Chinese authorities for permission to inspect the country's prisons was ignored. A representative traveled to China and Hong Kong in February and March and interviewed former prisoners. Further interviews were conducted in New York. A report is planned for 1994.

Follow-up on Earlier Work

In response to the British government's critique of the project's 1992 report on prison conditions in the U.K., in February a project representative traveled to London and conducted visits to two prisons that had been most harshly criticized by the report and where, according to the government, significant improvements took place subsequently. An extensive memorandum resulting from thefollow-up visit was sent to the British government in May. We had found some improvements but informed the government that overall conditions were still inadequate.

Two developments related to the project's earlier work took place in Brazil. In February, state prosecutors in Sao Paulo recommended the indictment of 120 policemen for their role in the October 1992 massacre in which at least 111 prisoners lost their lives (those indicted, however, had not been arrested as of early November, and no trials had taken place). In addition, the overall number of extrajudicial executions by the police in São Paulo decreased in the course of the year, a decline that was attributed to the outcry following the 1992 massacre. In September, a ground-breaking decision found a civil policeman guilty of the 1989 killing of eighteen prisoners in a Sao Paulo jail and sentenced him to 516 years in prison for the killings. This was the first time that a policeman was found guilty of killing prisoners. In both cases, the project had sent representatives in the immediate aftermath of the massacres and contributed to publicizing the cases both in Brazil and internationally.

Domestic Prison Issues

For several years, the project had been involved in domestic prison-related issues. The project continued monitoring conditions for U.S. prisoners in 1993, with particular focus on the proliferation of super-maximum security institutions (or "maxi-maxis"), a problem to which the project first called attention in its 1991 report on prison conditions in the U.S. On two occasions, the project sent letters to the Attorney General, raising issues that included administrative transfers of prisoners and new restrictions on access to the telephone for federal prisoners.

Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union planned to publish in December 1993 a report on U.S. compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which includes important safeguards of relevance to prison conditions. The covenant, ratified by the United States in June 1992, provides an additional, and extremely valuable, tool for establishing accountability for prison abuse. Because in important respects the United States falls short of international standards relevant to prisons, we believe that scrutiny under these standards, and in light of international practices, can be particularly effective.

The project collaborated with the American College of Physicians, the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and Physicians for Human Rights in producing a report on physician participation in capital punishment in the U.S. For this report also, a December 1993 release was planned.

The HRW Prison Project invited Peter Loggenberg, of the South African Police and Prison Officers Civil Rights Union, an illegal organization of mostly black professionals, to be honored for his organization's work at Human Rights Watch's observance of Human Rights Day in December.

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