LEAP 2022: Europe's carceral fever

Detaining a person in prison is one of the harshest displays of state power against an individual. It should be a measure of last resort, but it continues to be widely accepted as normal practice across Europe.

We are also witnessing an increase in the use of police forces’ administrative detention powers. Fundamental rights – such as the right to liberty, the presumption of innocence, and the right to silence – appear to be widely ignored or become meaningless in practice.

Policy solutions have largely followed the same carceral logic. Electronic monitoring is often used as a response to prison overcrowding, but this does not reduce the number of people caught in the system. Instead, it enables the expansion carceral control outside of the prison walls, while further deepening structural inequalities.

Deprivation of liberty as a one size fits all model for social control is not only unjust and unfit for purpose; it is also dehumanising. Its impact on the lives of impacted people, their families and their communities is severe and often definitive. It is high time that Europe reconsiders this model.

Speakers:

Laura Garius, Policy Lead, Release UK
Marcin Szwed, Strategic Litigation Programme, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (Poland)
Seán Binder, Human Rights Campaigner
Julien Fischmeister, Observatoire International des Prisons (France)