PRISON MANAGEMENT Guidance on the Nelson Mandela Rules The UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (SMR) were approved by the UN Economic and Social Council in 1957 and have served well as the key international standards governing the treatment of prisoners. In many countries, they have been used as the ‘blueprint’ for national prison rules and in others, they are the only document used to regulate the treatment of prisoners. In 2015, the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted the revised UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, known as the Nelson Mandela Rules to honour the legacy of the late President of South Africa. The Nelson Mandela Rules update and revitalise the original text of the SMR, with a ‘targeted revision’ of terminology and of eight specific areas that were in particular need of review: respect for prisoners’ inherent dignity; medical and health services; disciplinary measures and sanctions; investigations of deaths and torture in custody; protection of vulnerable groups; access to legal representation; complaints and independent inspection; and training of staff. In 2018, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights and PRI produced a Guidance Document on the Nelson Mandela Rules.332 This provides practitioners with comprehensive information on how to implement the revised rules in practice. The Guidance Document incorporates existing international legal and practical tools, ‘soft law’ principles and opinions of authoritative bodies, as well as promising national practice examples. As such, it is a useful resource for the interpretation and effective implementation of the Nelson Mandela Rules. Contact with the outside world Prisoners’ contact with the outside world plays an essential role in their rehabilitation and reintegration on release, through time spent face-to-face with family, friends, lawyers, counsellors, religious advisors and others, as well as through other forms of contact such as written correspondence, video and telephone calls. Face-to-face visits and telephone calls are the primary means of maintaining family ties for most prisoners and are especially important for prisoners who are functionally illiterate or who cannot rely on written correspondence. Telephone calls are particularly important for prisoners whose families cannot travel to distant prisons for in-person visitation. In 2018, a judgement by the European Court of Human Rights stated that imprisoning people thousands of miles from their families violates their right to family life. The judgement was made in the case of a prisoner in Russia who was serving his sentence in a prison 4,200 kilometres from his home town and who, as a result, had not seen his partner since 2014 and had never seen his four-year-old daughter.333 Conjugal visits are permitted in some jurisdictions although their provision varies a great deal. There were calls from women prisoners for such visits in Zimbabwe,334 while a court in Oman ruled to allow conjugal visits for the first time.335 The Department of Prison Management in Nepal announced plans for childless men and women ‘of reproductive age’ to have access to conjugal visits in order to allow them to have children.336 In Pakistan, a new ‘model’ prison is being built with provision for conjugal rooms.337 Technology is increasingly used as a cost-effective means of ensuring contact between prisoners and the outside world. In England and Wales, the government announced plans to install in-cell telephones as part of a drive to improve family ties and to stem the flow of illegal mobiles,338 while some prisons have installed photo booths that allow children to take photos with their imprisoned parents.339 Thailand and Taiwan have both launched pilots for video visits.340 (See Role and use of technologies, page 37). The prohibitive cost of making calls from and to prison – calls typically cost much more than non-prison calls – remains an issue in the US. In a progressive move, New York City Council has made all domestic calls to and from prisons free of charge, citing the advantages for prisoners in terms of their rehabilitation.342 RECOMMENDATION 16 Contact with the outside world is crucial for the rehabilitation and reintegration of prisoners. Because it is a right rather than a privilege, withholding or granting such contact should not be used as either a reward or a punishment. Letters, phone calls and other forms of remote and technology-based communication should never be used as substitutes for in-person visits. Many states in the US now permit prisoners to have electronic devices in their cells that enable them to use email, make video calls, play games, watch films, download books and take job training courses. Internet connection is controlled and the devices themselves are usually provided free of charge, but prisoners have to pay for the services they use; critics claim this is a means of ‘monetising human contact’.341 Penal Reform International and Thailand Institute of Justice | Global Prison Trends 2019 | 31