The Economist recently published an article ("Still Miserable", May 14, 2009) about a French government program geared towards improving the conditions of French prisons(http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13653923).
Much like America, French prisoners exist in inhumane conditions. In a 2006 report by Alvaro Gil-Robles (the Council of Europe's human-rights commissioner), he sited chronic overcrowding, unsanitary cells, dirty lavatories, broken showers and mattresses on the ground in many of the 194 prisons in France.
When I read this article, I could not help but think about the United Nation Development Program's HDI rating scale we discussed in our last class. HDI provides statistical information about the human development of 179 countries in the world based on three different dimensions: living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), being educated (measured by adult literacy and enrollment at the primary, secondary and tertiary level) and having a decent standard of living (measured by purchasing power parity, PPP, income).
In 2008, France was rated as 11th out of 179 countries.
Knowing that the prisons in France are “on the borderline of human dignity”, I began to wonder if the United Nation Development Program includes all of a country's citizens in its calculation of human development? More specifically, are prisoners included? If it does not, is it a huge oversight and discriminatory to not include various sectors of society? Would the figures change dramatically if they were included? Additionally, should prisoners have the ability to live long and healthy lives, to receive various levels of education and to have a decent standard of living (the basic dimensions of human development)?
What do you think?
- Jessica K.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Yes. A society should certainly measured by how it treats its prisoners. There are various indicators of the good management/governance of prisoners, but I don't know of any comparative indicators that measure different countries' treatment of prisoners. Does anyone else know of any?
ReplyDeleteOne curious fact from my Barcelona days is that La Senyora de la Merce (Our Lady of Mercy) is the patron of the city of Barcelona and of prisoners, so the Mayor always goes to a prison on Sept 24 and makes a speech. I remember one year he went to an old prison and said he was committed to closing it, but that also he was committed to keeping it in the city. After all he said to the prisoners you may be in prison, but you have the right to be near your families. I remember thinking how different that was to the policy in the US and Australia, where they send prisoners far from the city.
John casey
In another HDI-related posting, Map Scroll analyzes how individual US states would compare to nations around the world. They find that Arkansas, Louisiana, West Virginia and Mississippi rank below Albania!
ReplyDeleteNY and NJ would rank around #6 in the world if they were independent nations.
The map itself is pretty fascinating if you consider recent elections.
http://mapscroll.blogspot.com/2009/05/human-development-index-by-state.html