<Themes and Activities>

The Alliance of NGOs

on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice

Themes and Activities

The Alliance functions as a true coalition. Its work agenda is identified by member organizations according to their particular experience and interest. The tasks are carried out by representatives of member organizations through regular meetings, consultation with national UN delegations, collaboration with UN agencies, and through members coming together in Working Parties.

Meetings

The Alliance and its Working Groups meet six (6) times a year on the second Friday in January, March, May, July, September and November.

Activities

The following represent some of the major activities of the Alliance past and present:

Alliance initiative and organizational efforts were responsible for the development of international treaties and conventions providing for the return o f convicted foreign offenders to their home countries to serve their sentences; the Alliance also originated the requirement in laws applicable to prisoner exchanges, that such exchanges be carried out only with the "consent of the prisoner;"

The Alliance conceived, developed and introduced a code of conduct for law enforcement officers, moving for its adoption by the UN General Assembly;

The Alliance conceived and implemented an international research project on the status of children held in prisons with their mother; it also published the conclusions of the project for distribution to interested parties throughout the world;

The Alliance drafted rules for the treatment of foreign prisoner which standards were subsequently approved by the UN General Assembly;

The Alliance actively assisted the UN Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch, in preparation for the 7th UN Crime Congress, held in Havana, Cuba in 1990, with the drafting of guidelines regarding alternatives to imprisonment;

In 1993 the Alliance released the findings of an international survey on the status of prison health care, including a recommended list, of minimum standards for use by prison system's worldwide. Upon the request of individual countries, the Alliance identified local resources for assistance in implementing these standards;

In late 1992 the Alliance formed a Working Party on Crime Prevention to assist the UN Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch in fulfilling the UN Crime Commission's mandate for study of this subject;

The Alliance's Working Party on Restorative Justice has been formulating restorative justice standards considered by the 9th UN Crime Congress, held in Vienna April 2000, and for further UN and international action;

In addition to work on substantive crime prevention and criminal justice issues, the Alliance has been instrumental in the development of ancillary meetings sponsored by the NGO community worldwide to supplement the official programs at the UN Crime Congresses, held every five years. The Alliance ahs assumed responsibility for arrangements, scheduling, and the provision of simultaneous interpretation for these ancillary meetings, which are unique within the UN system;

The Alliance has established and sponsors an Information Center to coordinate and conduct criminal justice surveys developed by the Alliance and its Working Parties. The Center responds to requests for assistance and information from individuals and organization, as well as countries around the world. Center activities have increase in recent years due to the dramatic political changes within the former Soviet Eastern Bloc and in several African and Asian countries. Finding themselves ill equipped to deal effectively with emerging criminal justice issues, many of the countries and their NGOs have found the Information Center's data invaluable.