Death Penalty News

Click here  to Google translate this article into your own language La colonia penitenciaria de Rikers Island está clavada en un trozo de tierra que emerge del East River. La única vía de acceso al enorme correccional es un puente desde el barrio neoyorquino de Queens. Lleva tres minutos recorrerlo con el autobús de la línea Q100. Es el tiempo que necesita Hannah para retocarse antes de dejar todas sus pertenencias en la taquilla y pasar a ver a su novio. Ahí estuvo ella encerrada antes por drogas. Al llegar al centro de visitas, un par de guardias suben e invitan a los pasajeros a dejar cualquier droga o arma antes de bajar. Al abrirse las puertas se siente un fuerte olor a queroseno. Todos se ponen en fila para que les olfatee un perro en medio del estruendo de los motores de los aviones que cruzan la bahía de Bowery en vuelo rasante hacia el aeropuerto de LaGuardia. El conductor del Q100 es la primera persona que encuentran los presos de Rikers cuando son puestos e...

NUR-SULTAN – Penal Reform International (PRI) is seeking to assist Kazakhstan in reforming its penal system, step up efforts to prevent torture and update detention facilities in line with international standards, said PRI Central Asia Director Azamat Shambilov. The organisation has been working for 30 years across 90 countries worldwide.   “There was one person, Ahmed Othmani, who was a former prisoner. He had been in prison for 12 years. He was sentenced due to his political views. Amnesty International gave him the status of a prisoner of conscience. When he was released, he started to work at Amnesty International fighting for human rights. There he met a woman, Vivien Stern, who has been working at Amnesty International for many years. They were visiting prisons to protect the rights of prisoners,” Shambilov told The Astana Times. A group of criminal justice and human rights activists founded the organisation in 1989 to ensure fair and effective criminal ju...

Above the din of disturbing news – that discordant banging you’re hearing, steadily getting louder and louder, that you can no longer ignore – that’s the drumbeat of the unfree. Dehumanized by the labels “prisoner,” “inmate,” and “convict,” even reduced to serial numbers like Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean in Les Misérables , these men and women are, just like you and me, or any mortal – irrespective of flaws, frailties, even felonious acts and misdemeanors – endowed with the right to be treated with dignity, decency, and respect. Advancing ten specific demands as a rallying cry in prisons nationwide, these brave incarcerated souls are striking by: not eating, refusing to do prison work, engaging in sit-ins, and taking part in myriad other acts of nonviolent resistance that could, nonetheless — given the carceral, contentious environment they’re taking place in — quickly trigger violence (even reprisals, including the nefarious, all-too-frequent imposition of solitary confineme...