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Articles on Prisons

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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.

Who was Robert Badinter, the most important Frenchman of whom you never heard?

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.
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

Use of lockdowns in Canadian prisons could amount to torture

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

How Ecuador went from an ‘island of peace’ to one of the world’s most violent countries

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.
Leonard Mack was exonerated after 47 years in New York in September 2023. Elijah Craig II/Innocence Project

How mistaken identity can lead to wrongful convictions

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.
Panic over supposed ‘super-predator’ teens ended years ago, but its consequences did not. jabejon/iStock via Getty Images Plus

40 years ago, the US started sending more and more kids to prison without hope of release, but today, it’s far more rare – what happened?

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.

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