Submission to the Universal Periodic Review

“Far from reducing the prison population, the UK government has committed to building 20,000 additional prison places in the next four years and developing a pipeline of future places after that.

“Rates of violence and self-harm rose significantly between the last Universal Periodic Review and the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, which artificially suppressed some kinds of conflict in prison. The government’s response to the pandemic risks learning the wrong lessons about prison safety.

“The 23-hour lockdowns adopted during the pandemic breached international standards for the treatment of people in prison and have stored up problems for the future. Proposed changes to the Human Rights Act will further erode the rights of people in prison.

“The UK government has failed to address ethnic inequalities in the use of imprisonment. Instead, the government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill will exacerbate the problem, while the Prisons Strategy White Paper entirely overlooks race and ethnicity.”

Read the full submission