From AFP:
The inmates at Haiti's only women's prison cry out in desperation as warden Marie-Yolaine Mathieu makes her rounds, hoping that she will hear their case and perhaps, help secure their release.
This impoverished Caribbean country's broken judicial system has failed its citizens at every turn. But it has been especially delinquent in prosecuting those who face criminal charges but have never been convicted of crimes.
Haiti's main in prison in Port-au-Prince was virtually destroyed by the 7.0-magnitude quake on January 12, and almost all of its estimated 4,000 male prisoners escaped.
But the women's institution -- condemned years ago by UN officials as "cruel and inhumane" -- still holds its unhappy occupants. Built for around 30 inmates houses 300.
From Arab News:Justice Minister Muhammad Al-Eisa said on Thursday the Kingdom’s efforts to revamp the judicial system were well under way and that women would eventually be allowed to practice as lawyers representing women clients.
Speaking about women lawyers, Sheikh Abdullah Al-Guwair, director of the Department of Lawyers at the Saudi Ministry of Justice, said they would soon be allowed to represent women clients.
“The women will be issued a restrictive form of license that will give them access to certain areas of the courts and in cases in which they are representing women clients only,” he said.
From Bongani Fuzile @ the Daily Dispatch Online:FED UP with crime in their village, elderly women from Kwalini in King William’s Town went on the offensive – and arrested a suspected criminal. On Thursday night they arrested a suspected robber – the son of one of them – who had run to their village seeking refuge.
And they warned this is only the start. “This is no joke,” said one of them, Cynthia Baleni. “We are are fed up with crime that has dented the image of King William’s Town, criminals must watch out.”
The women’s group started searching after being tipped off about a suspect in an armed robbery at nearby Upper Mthombe. “We heard that one of the suspects was hiding in the bushes not far from here. We can’t live with thugs. We took our sticks to search for him,” said Baleni.
From Chris Smyth @ Times Online:...1.4 million criminal trials from the 18th and 19th centuries that feature in registers that go online for the first time today.
The records, published in a collaboration between the website and the National Archives, include every criminal trial in England and Wales that was reported to the Home Office between 1791 and 1892.
It was a deadly period to be a criminal — the “Bloody Code” when more than 200 different offences carried the death penalty was in place at the start of this era — and the documents detail 10,300 executions as well as 97,000 transportations and 900,000 sentences of imprisonment.
The documents, held in 279 volumes at the National Archives in Kew, were scanned in by volunteers for the genealogical website ancestry.co.uk and can be searched by keyword. They are available only to subscribers, although the website is offering a free two-week trial.
From the Guardian:In pay, pensions, politics and promotion, the gender gap is a disgrace. But in justice, women face a national scandal. A report published today by the Fawcett Society reveals a justice system that is "institutionally sexist". This is of no surprise to organisations such as the Howard League, which have long campaigned against the hopeless situation of women rotting in our prisons.
Today, as we sit outraged in our armchairs, 4,274 women and girls languish in our jails. These are not the dangerous criminals one might imagine, but often sad victims of circumstance and violence – often at the hands of men. More than half have been victims of domestic violence, a third have experienced sexual abuse, and 25% have been in care as children. Two-thirds of women in prison have dependent children under 18; of these, just one in 20 remain in their own home once their mother has been sentenced.
These vulnerable women, damaged at the hands of men through violence, sexual abuse, neglect, or trafficking, are victims themselves. The revolving door at the prison gates is an appalling and hopeless cycle – and the taxpayer funds each pointless prison place to the tune of over £40,000 a year for each female we incarcerate. Tragically, the dire consequences leave blood on the male-dominated government's hands.
