Overview of harm reduction in prisons in seven European countries.

While the last decade has seen a growth of support for harm reduction around the world, the availability and accessibility of quality harm reduction services in prison settings is uneven and continues to be inadequate compared to the progress achieved in the broader community. This article provides a brief overview of harm reduction in prisons in Catalonia (Spain), Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Poland, and Portugal. While each country provides a wide range of harm reduction services in the broader community, the majority fail to provide these same services or the same quality of these services, in prison settings, in clear violation of international human rights law and minimum standards on the treatment of prisoners. Where harm reduction services have been available and easily accessible in prison settings for some time, better health outcomes have been observed, including significantly reduced rates of HIV and HCV incidence. While the provision of harm reduction in each of these countries' prisons varies considerably, certain key themes and lessons can be distilled, including around features of an enabling environment for harm reduction, resource allocation, collection of disaggregated data, and accessibility of services.

Movilidad bajo sospecha: el conveniente vínculo entre inmigración y criminalidad en las políticas migratorias de la Unión Europea / Mobility under suspicion: the convenient link between immigration and criminality in European Union immigration policies

Los discursos mediáticos, políticos y sociales tienden a establecer un vínculo frecuente entre inmigración y criminalidad que acaba traduciéndose en la efectiva criminalización de los inmigrantes. Un grupo social puede ser criminalizado tanto por la propria legislación como por la actuación seletiva de las instancias de aplicación del sistema penal. Sin embargo, en el contexto de la Unión europea, la criminalización de los inmigrantes debe entenderse asociada a su política migratoria y su relación con la seguridad y el control de fronteras. En el caso de España, esta criminalización toma distintas formas pero sus efectos son igualmente funcionales a los fines de las restrictivas políticas migratorias europeas.(AU)

Social, political and media discourses tend to establish a frequent link between immigration and crime, which eventually leads to the effective criminalization of immigrants. A social group can be criminalized both by laws and the selective action in the aplication of the penal system. However, in the context of the European Union, the criminalization of migrants should be interpreted together with immigration policies and its relationship to security and border control. In the case of Spain, this criminalization takes many forms, but its effects are equally functional for the purposes of restrictive European immigration policies.(AU)