Quaker representatives to the UN Crime Commission: Kimmett Edgar, Nicholas McGeorge, Oliver Robertson and Marian Liebmann. Photo: Photo courtesy Marian Liebmann.
United Nations Commission considers criminal justice reform
Oliver Robertson reports from the Continent
Friends have addressed the United Nations on issues of criminal justice reform. At the twentieth UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, held in Vienna earlier this month, Quaker representatives spoke to the assembled governments and professionals about the principles that should underlie the treatment of prisoners. Friends also took part in events on new standards for women prisoners, on prisoner consultation and on foreign national prisoners.
‘We reaffirm the humanity of all those in prison, staff and prisoners’, read the statement. It reminded governments that ‘All are entitled to dignity; all are capable of good’ and that ‘It should be the aim of all of us in all our endeavours to encourage the flourishing of the human spirit.’ The statement came in the context of a likely review of the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, the 1955 document that forms the cornerstone of international standards on prisoners, which some worry could lead to a weakening of protection for detainees.
Friends also spoke on the value of cooperation between different UN agencies, using the example of the new UN Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders (known as the Bangkok Rules after the city where they were drafted). These standards, which Quakers helped devise, had input from both criminal justice and human rights bodies within the UN system.
One of the Quaker-organised side events at the Commission was on prisoner consultation. Friends’ representative Kimmett Edgar talked about the different forms such consultation could take, from elected prisoner councils to suggestion boxes, and the value of such involvement. He also reminded his audience that, while staff do not necessarily need to accept all the prisoners’ suggestions, listening is important.‘If you don’t listen to the prisoners’, he said, ‘they’ll make you aware in other ways, whether that’s by cutting themselves or getting in fights’.
