The treatment of prisoners
Kimmett Edgar, of the Prison Reform Trust, urges Friends to support a revision of standards for prisons
1955. Anthony Eden was elected prime minister. Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Elvis Presley made his first television appearance. And the United Nations developed a set of standards for prisons – the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (or SMR for short). The SMR have remained substantially the same since 1955. In 2010, the United Nations took the decision to review them, to determine whether progress (both in human rights and in prison practice) required updating the rules. Rachel Brett, representing the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in Geneva, and I, representing the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC), have provided a Quaker input into the process.
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