On Monday 28 June 2021, Antigone was invited to participate in a meeting organised by the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) of the European Union.

The pandemic has shown even more clearly the need for an external view and expertise, to complement independent inspection bodies and playing a role that does not overlap with theirs.

Indeed, the sudden interruption of information between inside and outside, the lack of institutional transparency during the pandemic, the request for help from civil society in strategic areas show that civil society monitoring initiatives are essential for the respect of the rights of inmates and for the prevention of torture and abuses.

On behalf of the European Prison Observatory, and with the support of the Worlrd Organisation against Torture, Antigone has asked to the European institutions to put pressure on Member States to allow civil society organisations access to prisons.

To read the document presented to the European institutions, see here.

In the European Union, over 584,485 people are currently detained in penal institutes. Countries with the highest prison population are the United Kingdom and Poland (with over 93,000 and over 73,000 detainees respectively) followed by France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, whose prison systems host around 64,000 detainees each. Prison populations have to drop of over 30,000 people to find the following group made up by Romania and the Czech Republic, with a little over 22,000 prisoners. The most numerous group of remaining countries follows at a short distance with numbers ranging between 619 of Malta, and almost 17,000 of Hungary.

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The following information on prisons in different European countries has been collected in the last few weeks thanks to the work of the European Prison Observatory members. Please note that the situation is constantly changing and that this information might already be out of date.
The information presented in the report published here and in the map shown below will be updated in the next days.

Read Report 25.03 - Read update 03.04 - Read update 10.04 

Read update 17.04 - Read update 24.04 - Read update 30.04

Read update 08.05 - Read update 15.05 - Read update 26.05 

Read update 05.06

UPDATE #10 AUSTRIA, September 29th, 2020

UPDATE #11 ENGLAND & WALES, October 5th, 2020

UPDATE #12 NORTH RHINE-WESTPHALIA (GERMANY), October 7th, 2020

UPDATE #13 GREECE, October 9th, 2020

UPDATE #14 HUNGARY, October 12th, 2020

UPDATE #15 ITALY, October 15th, 2020

UPDATE #16 PORTUGAL, October 19th, 2020

UPDATE #17 ROMANIA, October 14th, 2020

Read more: COVID-19: what is happening in European prisons?

With the support of the Eu-Russia Civil Society Forum Antigone and the Russian Ngo Man and Law developed the project “Rights in prison. EU-Russia Civil Society Forum and the defence of fundamental rights in the penitentiary system”.
On 6-8 July 2016, a working meeting of the team took place in Rome, Italy. Apart from the project partners - Alessio Scandurra from the "Antigone" Association (Rome) and Irina Protasova from the NGO "Man and Law" (Yoshkar-Ola), the events gathered representatives of the civilian oversight commissions from the Republic of Mari-Eland the Tomsk Region and the "For Civil Rights" Committee (Russia) as well as NGOs "A Buon Diritto" and "Forum Droghe" (Italy), and others.

On 6 July 2016, the Open Event "Civil Society in Russia and Italy. Share of Experiences and Cooperation Opportunities" was held.
Later on an Italian delegation travelled to Russia, but this time not everything went as planned. The representatives of three Italian human rights organisations - Antigone, Arcigay and A Buon Diritto - that were visiting the offices of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture in Nizhny Novgorod were detained by police for 10 hours and each fined 2,000 roubles for allegedly violating migration rules before being released. After the release the Italian embassy recommended the member of the Italian delegation to travel back to Italy as soon as possible.

Read more: Rights in prison in Europe and in Russia