Justice
Greek courts abuse pre-trial detention
With large prisoner numbers and detention times far in excess of European averages, pre-trial detention is being abused by the Greek justice system.
Pre-trial detention: you never get over a dead son
Danijoy Pontes, 23 years old, was sent to pre-trial detention in 2020, for a total of 11 months. He died in a Lisbon prison: Divergente dug his story as part of EDJNet's investigation on the abuse and risks of pre-trial detention in Europe.
Presumed innocent but detained for months pretrial in Germany and EU
One in five people jailed in the European Union hasn't been convicted of a crime — including 12,000 in Germany alone. Studies suggest that pretrial detention is unnecessary in most cases.
One in five people in EU prisons are in pretrial detention
People waiting for a final sentence often suffer worse conditions than convicted prisoners, even if they're innocent.
Covid-19 and prisons: painful closures and encouraging innovations
An interview with Alessio Scandurra, director of the European Prison Observatory, to understand the impact of the pandemic on European prisons, in terms of both healthcare and opportunities for inmates.
“With the pandemic, it was a prison within a prison”
Aurélie, 27, spent several years in prison. Maxime, 35, was an inmate in the Paris region, where the overcrowding rate is 160%. Like 13,000 other prisoners, he got out thanks to early-release measures enacted between March and May 2020. They told us their stories.
France: The pandemic has exposed a dysfunctional prison system
While the poor state of French prisons led many to fear a serious health crisis in the wake of Covid-19, the worst of those fears have not materialised. However, the drastic lockdown measures have done nothing to benefit the mental health of detainees. Nor have they led to any serious reevaluation of the system itself.
How Europe’s prisons have fared in the Covid-19 pandemic
Prisons make fertile breeding grounds for viruses, yet administrations have revealed little about Covid-19 cases, deaths and vaccinations in Europe’s prisons. Data from 32 countries show the pandemic’s impact on prisons.
Italy faces even fewer infringement procedures
Since the beginning of the year, five infringement procedures have been initiated against Italy. Only five countries have kept their numbers lower. The total number of infringements against Italy has dropped to 82. This makes Italy the seventh least problematic EU country in this regard.
