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Accountability dossier / Prisons

BEHIND WALLS.
STILL UNDER LAW.

A prison sentence or detention order restricts liberty. It does not extinguish dignity, bodily integrity, access to care or the state’s duty of protection.

“The state may take liberty. It may not take humanity.”

01

Closed doors do not close the law

MIRLA examines allegations of excessive force, degrading treatment, denial of medical care, unsafe conditions, corrupt trafficking networks, staff complicity, retaliation and failures to protect prisoners from foreseeable harm.

02

Priority concerns

The prison environment concentrates power and vulnerability. Evidence must therefore be preserved quickly and examined independently.

  • Violence and use of force
  • Torture and ill-treatment allegations
  • Medical neglect and mental-health risks
  • Deaths, serious injury and suicide in custody
  • Contraband, coercive debt and corruption
  • Foreign-prisoner isolation and family access
03

A test of government

Prison accountability is not softness. It is the hard discipline of a constitutional state. How a country treats people it has completely under its control is one of the clearest measures of public integrity.

AUTHORITY MUST
ANSWER TO EVIDENCE.

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