News

On 23 March 2026, at the margin of the 61st Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, ICPR and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights held a side event on the topic of Human Rights Compliant Alternative Measures to Pre-Trial Detention.

Professor Jessica Jacobson has been appointed as a non-judicial member of the Sentencing Council for England and Wales for a period of three years, from 2 March 2026.

On Friday 23rd January Professor Mai Sato spoke at a special session of the UN Human Rights Council to address the deteriorating human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

ICPR has published a report detailing the findings of a research project on experiences of care proceedings funded by the Department for Education.

A powerful news report on Brazil’s dramatic rise in female prisoner numbers has used data from our World Female Imprisonment List.

Professor Mai Sato, has commented on the case of a child bride in Iran, Goli Kouhkan, who has been spared execution over the death of her husband after his parents were paid the equivalent of £70,000 in exchange for their forgiveness.

This year marks a remarkable milestone: the 25th anniversary of the World Prison Brief. What began as a modest attempt to compile worldwide prison data has evolved into an indispensable resource accessed over 2.7 million times by more than 524,000 users from 230 countries and territories in 2025 alone.

At regular intervals over the past year or so, reporters have contacted us about foreign nationals in prison. Usually, they are looking for context and comment on controversial proposals emanating from the USA, the UK, Sweden and Denmark to remove foreign nationals from their prisons and send them to third countries with which they lacked any connection.