Football, the gym, personal visits, all came to an abrupt end in Hungarian prisons as the coronavirus outbreak hit. Since then, prisoners and relatives have taken to Skype. The lack of face-to-face meetings has been offset by the fact that the great majority of prisoners have been vaccinated.
Europe wants to be a leader in tech revolutions like AI. This ambition, however, contrasts sharply with Brussels’ desire to protect the right to privacy and AI needs data to develop. A new European ruling promises to make both objectives compatible, though it does not resolve the problem.
Despite European hopes being invested in the technology, contact tracing apps have only succeeded in tracking 5% of registered cases since they were introduced in the EU. The lack of public confidence in the scheme has proven to be an insurmountable hurdle.
European countries have spent months debating what to do with data collected through contact tracing apps. A lack of consensus, as well as the launch of new systems by Apple and Google, lessened the chances of a unified protocol among the bloc. What is clear is that Europe always prioritised the data protection of its own users.
For years the media have denounced that Romania is becoming the landfill of Europe. Yet, the institutions do not intervene, and meanwhile the European Environment Agency reports that the country ranks first in Europe for deaths caused by pollution.
"The epidemic has been contained at the cost of enormous sacrifices for France’s prison population", says Dominique Simonnot, French chief prisons inspector.
Cramped, often unhygienic, and already characterised by numerous restrictions, many prisons in Europe were hit hard by the pandemic. In Italy, where prison facilities are among the most overcrowded in the EU, the pandemic aggravated a number of preexisting systemic problems.
Aurélie, 27, spent several years in prison. Maxime, 35, was an inmate in the Paris region, where the overcrowding rate is 160%. Like 13,000 other prisoners, he got out thanks to early-release measures enacted between March and May 2020. They told us their stories.
In many European countries, containing the spread of Covid-19 has come at the price of human rights. European prisoners have had to endure extended isolation, suspended visiting hours, and the cancellation of training and recreational activities.
While the poor state of French prisons led many to fear a serious health crisis in the wake of Covid-19, the worst of those fears have not materialised. However, the drastic lockdown measures have done nothing to benefit the mental health of detainees. Nor have they led to any serious reevaluation of the system itself.
