Music can provide incarcerated youth with opportunities to build confidence, engage with learning, develop social skills, and and redefine themselves from young offenders to young artists.
The Matsqui Institution, a medium-security federal men’s prison in Abbotsford, B.C. The Canadian government plans to amend legislation to allow detained migrants to be held in federal prisons.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Placing migrants who are not criminals in prisons risks serious violations of their human rights and perpetuates narratives about the criminality of immigrants.
Inmate fire crews work alongside professional fire crews and do the same work. But they receive little, if any, pay.
David McNew/AFP via Getty Images
Georgia’s inmate fire crews respond to hundreds of calls in surrounding counties every year. Without them, there might not be a responder, but they aren’t universally loved – and they don’t get paid.
An 1862 photo of a prison hulk docked in Ireland Island, Bermuda.
Royal Navy
Convicts worked in the dockyards in Bermuda for 40 years.
Robert Badinter sits at the National Assembly on 17 September 1981, during the examination of his bill on the abolition of the death penalty. The death penalty was abolished in France on 9 October 1981.
Dominique Faget/AFP.
The death in February of the man who abolished the death penalty inspired a national homage in France. Yet, Robert Badinter remains little known outside of the country.
Receiving visitors while behind bars was a raft of benefits, but people have reported many barriers. It must be made easier to help drive down recidivism rates.
The Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility, in Dartmouth, N.S. The Nova Scotia Supreme Court recently ruled that the use of lockdowns to address staff shortages at provincial jails is unlawful.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Mike Dembeck
Lockdowns can have severe impacts on an inmate’s mental and physical health and well-being.
Special Forces soldiers in action: Ecuador is hostage to organised crime, amid a culture of violence rooted in the foundations of a society with a fragile economy and political and legal systems compromised by corruption.
AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa
Just five years ago, Ecuador was still considered one of the safest countries in Latin America. Now, there is a brutal war playing out between criminal gangs and the state.
Black people have long faced systemic inequalities in Canada’s justice system. But more equitable sentencing practices could make the process fairer.
(Shutterstock)
This is a problem for everyone. Research shows mental health intervention and engagement helps reduce offending among people with serious mental illness who commit offences.
Built in 1821 to house and provide productive employment for the New South Wales colony’s growing population of female convicts, the Parramatta Female Factory was also the site of countless horrors.
Leonard Mack was exonerated after 47 years in New York in September 2023.
Elijah Craig II/Innocence Project
Leonard Mack spent years in a US jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Here’s how identification procedures can, and have, led to wrongful convictions, and what can be done to prevent it.
The possibility of introducing mandatory prison sentences for prolific shoplifters has been mooted by government ministers.
Neil Bussey/Shutterstock
Most people leaving prison face an uphill battle of service navigation that is too often deficit-focused, intentionally seeking out the failures of the individual and centred on punitive responses.
Panic over supposed ‘super-predator’ teens ended years ago, but its consequences did not.
jabejon/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Research on developing brains has helped bring about a sea change in attitudes toward juvenile life without parole. But many people who committed crimes as minors are still serving such sentences.
Dozens of people line up in Toronto in 1995 outside a downtown courthouse for entry to Paul Bernardo’s trial.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Moe Doiron
As a dangerous offender, Paul Bernardo is unlikely to ever be released from custody after 30 years behind bars — even after his transfer to a medium-security prison.
What does ‘justice reinvestment’ mean in practice? Who makes funding decisions? To find out more, we consulted Aboriginal communities in Bourke, Moree and Mount Druitt.