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Prisons - new material (62)

01 November 2005

Recent Developments in Prison Law - Part 1, Hamish Arnott, Simon Creighton & Nancy Collins. Legal Action January 2006, pp. 21-24. Latest in a series of updates on the law relating to prisoners and their rights. The article considers life sentences, recall of determinate sentence prisoners and the CJA 2003.

"Mujeres, Integración y Prisión" [Women, Integration and Prison], edited by SURT (Marta Cruells and Noelia Igareda), Aurea, Barcelona, June 2005, pp.270. This book is the product of an international research project funded by the European Commission to examine the situation of women in prison in European countries. It includes country reports by the partner organisations (on Spain, England and Wales, Hungary, France, Italy and Germany) as well as examining trends at a European level. It also considers the sociological profiles of imprisoned women and the reasons for their imprisonment, providing a comparative study of findings in the different countries and drawing a relationship between social exclusion and presence in prisons, as well as expressing concern over the difficulties of reintegration into society for women following their release from prison. A chapter written by the Italian association Antigone includes proposals to improve the situation of female prisoners in EU member states through the adoption of positive steps at a European level as EU institutions begin to produce legislation in this field. Statistics are also provided for the different countries, showing that England and Wales have the highest number of female inmates (4,394, based on data for 2002) and have experienced the highest increase in the number of female detainees over a ten-year period, with the percentage of the overall prison population rising from 3.5% to 6.2% over the same period. Spain was the country where the percentage of female detainees in the overall prison population was highest (8%) although it had fallen from 9.5% over a ten-year period. Spain had the second highest number of female detainees (4,109). Available from: Aurea Editores, S.L., c/Perú, 160, 08020 Barcelona.