The Human Rights Watch Global Report on Prisons.

Human Rights Watch, New York, 1993 303 pp. $20. ISBN 1-56432-101-0

"Imprisonment", Human Rights Watch states in its Global Report on Prisons, "is by no means a marginal issue:" Each year tens of millions are confined. "Condemned for often serious offenses, without powerful supporters, often poor and inarticulate, disproportionately comprising members of minorities suffering from discrimination ...and removed from public view, prisoners are highly vulnerable to our worst impulses." As the Global Report shows, the findings of a six-year Human Rights Watch investigation of prison conditions in 20 countries confirm this. For example, "in country after country, punishments meted out within the prisons are cruel, humiliating and frequently applied in an arbitrary fashion without the slightest vestige of due process" it recommends that the UN establish a permanent working group on prison conditions with the mandate to conduct investigations, hold hearings and publish findings. An annual report by the Secretary-general on prison conditions worldwide and a yearly demographic survey of penal institutions are also recommended. This trenchant Global Report also calls for UN-sponsored international conferences on prison conditions and UN periodic examination and revision of its standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners.