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Preventing torture starts with the prison environment

Mon 9 December 2024

Environmental Conditions of Detention

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh Schools of Law and Music are raising awareness of how the environmental conditions of places of detention affect prisoners and other people deprived of their liberty, and may even contribute to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or torture. 

A new website launched ahead of Human Rights Day 2024 as part of the project Environmental Conditions of Detention highlights the crucial role played by sound (including music), temperature, light, and air in both physical and mental wellbeing. Those affected extend beyond people serving custodial sentences to children who are held in secure accommodation, people living in asylum detention, and in some cases patients, in hospitals and care homes. 

Launching the website, project leads Dr Kasey McCall-Smith (School of Law) and Dr Morag J. Grant (Reid School of Music) explained that while the link between environmental conditions and human rights abuses is increasingly documented, there are still not enough safeguards to prevent such abuses. 

Dr McCall-Smith, a human rights expert who leads the Law School’s Global Justice Academy and has researched the link between torture and detention conditions in the US detention facilities in Guantánamo and in relation to children on the UK prison estate, explained: “Defending against the most obvious examples of torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment requires securing human dignity of individuals deprived of their liberty at every point of their detention. Developing guidance about how to consider specific environmental conditions of detention will support those who work in places of detention and those who monitor detention facilities to guard against potential ill-treatment.”

The new project was inspired in part by research into music and sound in conditions of detention and punishment. Commenting on this, Dr Grant said: “When they think about torture, most people don’t think about sound, or music: they think of physical pain. But research has shown that sound and music have often been used as forms of both physical and psychological torture. The current lack of safeguards around the environmental conditions of detention is a contributory factor here. It’s now generally accepted that environmental noise can have a significant, detrimental impact on health and wellbeing: people deprived of their liberty have as much right to protection here as anyone else.”

Support for the new project was voiced by Jane Kilpatrick, Secretariat Officer for the UK National Preventative Mechanism, which monitors UK compliance with the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Kilpatrick commented: “OPCAT, and the Convention Against Torture, suggest a focus on active treatment of someone deprived of their liberty by someone else. However, environmental conditions – the size and fabric of a cell, being too cold or too hot, lack of access to light, for example – have measurable negative impacts on the health and wellbeing of people deprived of their liberty. The Guidance on Environmental Conditions of Detention provides a key reference document for monitors to consider whether the physical conditions of people detained contribute to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” 

The Guidance produced in the first phase of the Environmental Conditions of Detention project and was developed in the context of UK detention practices. It is the initial step in the project which aims to develop global guidance on environmental conditions of detention. This phase of the project was funded by the University of Edinburgh College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Knowledge Exchange and Impact Grant and the Edinburgh College of Art Research, Knowledge Exchange and Impact Fund.

Contacts: 

Dr Kasey McCall-Smith kasey.mccall-smith@ed.ac.uk

Dr M J Grant mj.grant@ed.ac.uk 

Stay up to date with the project:

Visit the project website: www.detentionconditions.org

Follow the project on Bluesky: @ecd-rights.bsky.social

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