Last Autumn, the world witnessed a fleeting frenzy when The Gambia’s eccentric President Jammeh resumed executions for prisoners condemned to death. These executions—the country’s first in 27 years—were soon halted...
The Crimes of Gambia's Criminal Justice System
Last Autumn, the world witnessed a fleeting frenzy when The Gambia’s eccentric President Jammeh resumed executions for prisoners condemned to death. These executions—the country’s first in 27 years—were soon halted...
Prisoner Voting and the Rule of Law: The Irony of Non-Compliance
By John Hirst – Prisoners’ voting rights remain a vexed issue in the United Kingdom. Following the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) decision in Hirst v UK (No 2),the...
Death Penalty in India: What the Future Holds
By Vrinda Bhandari – Constitutionally speaking, the death penalty in India is limited to the “rarest of the rare” cases and should be implemented in a time frame which is...
Political Betrayal
By Clive Stafford Smith I am writing this article in the airport waiting room in Guantánamo Bay, after a week visiting prisoners on this forsaken military base, and prior to...
Jurisdiction over police failures in Khayelitsha, South Africa: the inter-governmental dispute
In this post, Sanja Bornman, an Attorney at the Women’s Legal Centre in Cape Town, provides an overview of the current legal dispute surrounding the independent commission of inquiry set...
Disappointing Departures from the Verma Committee Report
The Union Cabinet of the Government of India has cleared an ordinance making changes to India’s rape laws. This comes a few days after the Justice Verma Committee submitted...
The Justice JS Verma Committee Report on Amendments to Criminal Law relating to Sexual Violence in India- Preliminary Observations
The Justice JS Verma Committee, set up by the Government of India after the horrific gang-rape in Delhi on December 16, 2012, submitted a 630 page report on 23 January...
James, Wells and Lee v UK: Indefinite Detention and Arbitrary Deprivations of Liberty
More than 6000 UK prisoners are currently subject to indefinite detention without means of progressing towards parole. In James, Wells and Lee v UK the European Court of Human Rights...
Prisoners' Voting Rights: The Gift That Keeps on Giving
If ‘suffrage is the pivotal right’, then it is only fitting that the issue of prisoners’ voting rights has become the turning point of the UK government’s approach to the...
SCOPPOLA v. ITALY (No. 3): A Step Backwards
In her recent post, Natasha Holcroft-Emmess critiques the European Court of Human Rights Grand Chamber (GC) judgment in Scoppola (no. 3); she rightly notes that the GC has taken a...
Scoppola v Italy (No. 3): Getting Prisoner Voting Right?
In Scoppola v Italy (No. 3) (Application no. 126/05, 22 May 2012) the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights once again engaged with the vexed issue of...
