No prison is an island – the role of civil society in post-conflict penal reform

PenalReform

Restoring the justice and prison systems back to working order is an essential and often urgent task for post-conflict states. In this expert blog for PRI, Terry Hackett, Warden of Pacific Institution in British Columbia (BC), Canada, draws on his recent research into civil society action in justice and correctional reform in Rwanda after the genocide of the early 1990s, to demonstrate the potential value that civil societies can bring to correctional reform processes in a post-conflict setting. Terry's qualitative research is based on 22 interviews of government officials and former and current NGO staff members involved in correctional reform since the 1994 genocide, as well as observations and site visits that occurred in Rwanda in late 2014. A full account of his research can be found in his recently published article The Prison should not be an island: the role of Civil society in post conflict prison reform in Rwanda, Acta Criminologica: Southern African Journal of Criminology Special Edition No 1/2015: Change in African corrections ? from incarceration to reintegration.