Bangkok rules

Girl Power

On 8th March 2023, International Women’s Day, we decided to calculate just how much Girl Power we possess…

Founders: 50% female

Governors: Philippines 43% female, UK 40% female

Managers: 100% female

Staff: 67% female

Long-term volunteers: 75% female

Current short-term volunteers: 100% female

Previous short-term volunteers: 95% female

If you’d like to read what our ladies have got up to lately, we’re pleased and proud to introduce you to Healthy Bonds, our 2023 impact report.

Girl Dis-empower

And it’s a good job we are such a female-dominated organization, because the number of female prisoners across the world is increasing fast - up 20% since 2000!

How many women are behind bars right now, do you think…?

100,000?

250,000?

500,000??

No, it’s well in excess of 750,000! That’s an awful lot of female disempowerment.

Girl Re-empower

But there is one tool that is helping to shine a pink-ish tinged light into this feminine doom and gloom…

The so-called Bangkok Rules are United Nations rules on the treatment of female detainees and non-detaineed offenders. If you haven’t read them, please do! And if you know someone who works with female detainees, shove a copy under their nose!

No, they don’t make the problem of female detention go away. But, where they are properly implemented, they make a significant difference to the re-empowerment of female detainees.

Dr Rachael Pickering is our co-founder and Chief Medical Officer.
Her views do not necessarily represent those of Integritas Healthcare
This article was first published elsewhere on this site on 8th March 2023

Respect the Rules

Advocacy within honour/shame systems

Nelson Mandela Rules

All of our detainee advocacy programs are pegged around the Nelson Mandela Rules (NMR), which is the popular name for the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. These 122 rules are the universally acknowledged blueprint for prison management in the 21st century.

The Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners is named in honour of Nelson Mandela who spent 27 years in South African prisons before becoming its first Black President.

Rules or reality?

But just as blueprints are not actual buildings, so these rules are no yet universal practice. Together with the UN, monitoring agencies and NGOs across the globe, we are committed to turning these rules into actual practice - for the benefit of detainees, custodial staff, and our society at large.

Response to rules?

Cultures fall broadly into guilt/innocence or honour/shame systems.

Honour/shame cultures are not exact opposites of guilt/innocence ones. They are just entirely different ways of thinking and behaving.

Our response to the stark difference between theory and reality is to be constructive rather than critical. This is because open criticism is ill received in many countries, including those steeped in an honour/shame culture. This makes it counter-productive.

Respect the rules

So we build each of our detainee advocacy programs around one of these rules, then turn it into a respectful message. This is more constructive than accusing someone of breaking a particular rule. ‘Rules’ are guilt/innocence language. ‘Respect’ is honour/shame language. ‘Respect the rules’ is a hybrid approach.