1. PRISON MANAGEMENT 55 Each prison should be required to submit trend information to the central prison administration on a regular basis. Prisons therefore need to have the systems and staff in place to do this. The relevant government department dealing with prisons should also allocate sufficient resources to analysing the data and providing recommendations for followup action. 56 Data on the trends in prisons should be made available to the public to ensure transparency and to allow public scrutiny. Published information about prison trends should not include any information about individual prisoners. Any data that could identify individual incidents or persons should be omitted. The Texas Justice Initiative “seeks to build narratives around who is dying in the Texas criminal justice system, bring attention to the lives that have been lost, and provide a foundation for research toward solutions that will save lives.”26 In Texas, law-enforcement agencies, local jails and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice are required to report to the Office of the Attorney General every time a person dies in custody, including deaths by natural causes, deaths by suicide and those caused by police shooting during arrest. 1 PROMISING PRACTICE: DOCUMENTING DEATHS IN CUSTODY – THE TEXAS JUSTICE INITIATIVE [1.6] In order to make this information publicly available, the Texas Justice Initiative, through public information requests, obtained the details of deaths that occurred between 2005 and 2015. The information is presented in an online database, which includes the name of each victim, time and place of death, cause of death, time in custody and a description of the circumstances surrounding the death. The data have been used to identify trends, including racial disparities in custodial mortality. 26 Children in prison 57 With regard to the “need to know” basis for accessing prisoner files, Rule 21.1 of the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (the Beijing Rules) state that, in relation to juveniles, records “shall be kept strictly confidential and closed to third parties. Access to such records shall be limited to persons directly concerned with the disposition of the case at hand or other duly authorized persons.” 58 Rule 21(d) of the UN Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty (the Havana Rules) specifies that the records of juveniles in detention must include details of the “notifications to parents and guardians on every admission, transfer or release of the juvenile.” Foreign nationals/ National minorities 59 If prisoners wish to access their files but cannot understand the language they are written in, they should be provided with translation services, if possible. For foreign nationals, this could be organized via their consular representatives. With the prisoner’s consent, consular officials may facilitate the access of foreign nationals to information in their file. Gender-related issues 60 The requirement in Rule 7(a) to include in a prisoner’s file “precise information enabling determination of his or her unique identity, respecting his or her self-perceived gender” is relevant to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans- and/or intersex (LGBTI) prisoners, particularly trans and intersex persons. However, the provision is intended as a means of protection and hence, information about the gender identity of prisoners should only be included in the files with explicit consent. 26. For more information, see: texasjusticeinitiative.org. Guidance document on the Nelson Mandela Rules 19