Dr Philippa Tomczak’s £1.1m UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship project has recently encompassed work with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Dr Morris Tidball-Binz. Our activities, including our landmark conference on 'Deaths in Prisons Worldwide' at the University of Oxford in November 2022 and associated article (Philippa Tomczak and Róisín Mulgrew, “Making prisoner deaths visible: Towards a new epistemological approach”, Incarceration, vol. 3, No. 1 (2023)) supported the first UN thematic report on deaths in prison in 2023.
The 53rd Regular Session of the Human Rights Council will take place from 19 June to 14 July 2023. Morris Tidball-Binz has issued his report to the General Council giving special acknowledgement of the contributions of Dr Philippa Tomczak, University of Nottingham and Dr Roisin Mulgrew, University of Galway, regarding the necessity of gathering comprehensive, reliable data on prisoner deaths worldwide (See Section D, page 14).
In the report, the Special Rapporteur raises awareness of deaths in prisons as an invisible, albeit largely preventable tragedy of global dimensions, often resulting from a failure in the duty of States to respect and protect the fundamental right to life of those deprived of liberty. While the report focuses on deaths in custody of persons in the criminal justice context from the moment of their arrest, including pretrial and postconviction, its conclusions and recommendations also apply to custodial deaths in other contexts, including immigration and psychiatric detention. The Special Rapporteur also presents practical recommendations based on best practices described in the report and international standards for the effective investigation and prevention of all deaths in custody.
For more information on our work on this please also refer to our recently launched policy brief on ‘Improving prisoner death investigations and promoting prison safety’ (PDF).
Posted on Friday 23rd June 2023