The International Corrections and Prisons Association (ICPA) invites the global corrections community to its 28th Annual Conference, “Partnerships in a Modern Corrections Landscape: Responding to Increasing Growth and Complexity.” Read more about the conference theme here.
Corrections systems worldwide are under unprecedented pressure as the number of people in custody and under community supervision continues to rise, alongside increasing complexity in background histories, risk profiles, and needs. ICPA 2026 will explore how a transformative, cross sector ecosystem approach can help corrections respond through collaboration and partnership with government agencies and social services, academia and research bodies, not for profit organisations, the private sector, and communities.
Across four days, the programme will showcase research, practice, and innovation focused on collaborative partnerships, managing prison growth, and community alternatives and reintegration, with a view to strengthening operational capacity, enhancing evidence informed practice, supporting safer diversion and reintegration, and addressing the systemic drivers of growth and complexity in prison systems around the world.
Agenda Overview
Details concerning the programme and presentations will be published as they become available. The overview of this exciting week-long event is as follows:
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Sunday 25th: Delegates Check-in / Prison Health Workshop / Welcome Reception / Heads of Service Forum (Invitation only)
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Monday 26th: Opening Sessions, Plenary, Workshops, and Exhibition / Host Reception
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Tuesday 27th: Distinguished Scholar Lecture, Workshops, Exhibition / AGM and Private Sponsor Events
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Wednesday 28th: Host Country Day, Plenaries, Workshops, and Exhibition / Awards Ceremony and Gala Dinner
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Thursday 29th: Plenaries, Workshops, Exhibition, and Closing Sessions
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Friday 30st: Facility Visits
Host Reception
Guests will be welcomed to a special event in the iconic surroundings of Belfast City Hall, hosted by the Northern Ireland Prison Service. The evening will celebrate local culture and hospitality, featuring samples of Northern Ireland’s finest food and drink, alongside live music and traditional Irish and Ulster Scots dancing. With a warm atmosphere and a few surprises woven throughout the night, it promises to be a memorable experience highlighting the spirit and vibrancy of the city.
Programme
Towards Global Prison Health Data: Pre-conference Workshop, Sunday October 25th, 1:30-4pm.
Professor Stuart Kinner
It is often said that “what gets counted gets done”. Yet remarkably, basic data to inform healthcare planning, governance, financing, and delivery in custodial settings is inadequate in most countries. At the regional and global level, the scope and quality of prison health data is even more limited. These critical data gaps are a major impediment to advancing correctional healthcare policy and practice, and to making progress towards compliance with international human rights standards such as the Mandela Rules. We will hold a satellite meeting at the 2026 ICPA annual conference in Belfast, in collaboration with the ICPA Healthcare Network, with a view to developing a Consensus Statement on the importance of prison health data to correctional practice, global health, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This Abstract pertains to the first event: a half-day workshop on Sunday October 25, prior to the Welcome Reception. The Sunday session will consist of some brief presentations and facilitated discussion, on the following topics:
a. Global prison health data: what is it, and why do we need it?
b. Custodial healthcare standards: measurable, equitable, comprehensive.
c. Collection, collation and reporting of prison health data: How to get there.
d. Examples of good practice, and important data gaps.
Please register your expression of interest here.
IACFP Scholar Keynote - Who Owns Reintegration?: Collaboration, Lived Experience and Co-Production of Justice Outcomes
Professor Shadd Maruna
The medical model of correctional rehabilitation framed reform as a process done to individuals by the state. The widespread rejection of this model beginning in the late 20th Century led to what is framed as “responsibilisation” whereby individuals are made responsible for their own reform, but not given the resources to succeed. Drawing on 30 years of research and theory around desistance from crime and reintegration, Prof Shadd Maruna will make a case for a third way for reintegration as a co-production, collectively owned by the state, community and the individual.
"Meet the Authors" ... Advancing Corrections 20th Anniversary Celebration
Frank Porporino Ph.D.
This special ‘Meet the Authors’ session is intended to celebrate publication of the 20th Anniversary Edition of ICPA’s scholarly journal Advancing Corrections. ICPA reached out to some of the leading scholars around the world to give their take on core issues facing correctional work, practice and services. We are bringing together ten of the twenty- eight scholars who contributed to the Edition to summarize the gist of their chosen policy or practice issue and highlight how it address one or more of the themes for the Annual Conference. We want to give Conference attendees an opportunity to listen, but importantly, also to question, ask for clarification, or even challenge. Come join this unique gathering for some practice-relevant conversation with our academic colleagues. The ten authors you will meet are (in alphabetical order): Valerie Jenness, John Todd-Kvan, Alison Liebling, Fergus McNeill, Rosemary Ricciardelli, Danielle S. Rudes, Emily J. Salisbury, Faye Taxman, Jason M. Williams and Kevin Wright.
Two Sides of the Same Door: A 360° View of Justice
Gethin Jones
What if the reason our justice systems struggle to create lasting change is not because we lack solutions—but because we don’t yet fully understand the problem? Drawing on lived and professional experience from both sides of the justice system, Gethin Jones challenges delegates to look beyond prison walls and consider the wider systems that shape the lives of those who enter them. From childhoods of trauma and education to poverty, addiction, mental health and social exclusion, this keynote explores how these interconnected systems create the pathways into custody and why no single organisation can solve the challenge alone. Through his own journey—from growing up in care, imprisonment and addiction to leading international justice consultancy—Gethin demonstrates how understanding every perspective is essential to creating meaningful change. He argues that lasting reform requires a 360-degree view of justice, bringing together practitioners, policymakers, researchers, people with lived experience and communities as equal partners. This keynote provides the foundation for the conference panel, Partnering with Lived Experience, challenging delegates to rethink how lived experience is used—not as a symbolic voice, but as an essential source of insight for creating justice systems that are fairer, more effective and fit for purpose.
A Giant on the Bridge
In this session, Fergus McNeill, Jo Collinson Scott (aka Jo Mango) and Louis Abbott (Admiral Fallow) will present and perform a unique version of ‘A Giant on the Bridge’; an award-winning piece of gig-theatre that combines songs and narratives in a powerful and evocative representation of the challenges associated with reintegration after imprisonment. ‘Giant’ is one of the creative outputs of a multi-partner research project that Fergus led between 2017-21, called ‘Distant Voices: Coming Home’, funded primarily by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The project, which involved colleagues in the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and the West of Scotland, as well as the Scottish arts organisation Vox Liminis, engaged with more than 150 people involved in some way with criminal justice in Scotland (including people in prison and under supervision in the community, prison staff and social workers, families affected by imprisonment, and victims of crime). We used creative methods – mainly collaborative songwriting -- to explore how they understood and experienced crime, punishment and reintegration, and to share we learned with a wide range of audiences.
No One Is an Island: Why Relationships Matter in Punishment and Reintegration
Rachel Condry
Contemporary correctional systems are increasingly asked to reduce reliance on imprisonment while promoting rehabilitation, reintegration, and community safety. Yet policy and practice often continue to be organised around the individual offender as the primary unit of analysis and intervention. Drawing on more than two decades of research on families affected by crime and punishment, this presentation proposes a relational approach that places families, relationships and communities at the centre of thinking about punishment and reintegration. Individuals in conflict 1 with the law are not isolated units of risk, need, responsibility or rehabilitation. Research has consistently shown that the harms of punishment flow through kin relationships and are more than ‘collateral’. The presentation extends earlier work on these ‘symbiotic harms’ (Condry and Minson, 2020) to consider the relational aspects of reintegration, the meaning of family and relationships in diverse social and cultural contexts, and key principles for a meaningful relational approach in a modern corrections landscape. If correctional systems are to reduce reliance on imprisonment safely and humanely, they need to understand ‘family’ not just as a rehabilitative resource, but as part of the social ecology through which punishment is experienced, mitigated, reproduced and potentially transformed.
Belonging Changes Behaviour: Elite Sport and a New Model for Corrections
Hilton Freund MBE
Dr Martha Newson
For the last seven years, researchers from the Universities of Oxford and Greenwich have partnered with the Twinning Project for one of the largest evaluations of a sport-based correctional intervention ever undertaken. The findings demonstrate that meaningful social bonds, created through educational programmes with professional football clubs, can significantly improve prison behaviour, increase optimism about life after release and enhance wellbeing. In this joint presentation, behavioural scientist Dr Martha Newson will explain the science behind social identity, belonging and behaviour change, revealing why traditional interventions often fail to create lasting change. Hilton Freund MBE, the Twinning Project’s CEO, will then demonstrate the practice underlying the findings. He’ll share practical evidence for upscaling, through the Twinning Project’s partnerships with more than 70 professional sports organisations across the UK and expansion to multiple sports and international roll-out across 5 continents. Combining rigorous academic evidence with practical implementation, this session will provide correctional leaders with a blueprint for building scalable partnerships rooted in belonging that improve institutional culture, prisoner wellbeing and community reintegration.
Registration
Full registration
Full registration provides access to the main conference programming and includes conference activities, the gala dinner, the welcome reception, and the host welcome reception.
Early bird (EBR) - until 14 August 2026
- Member: $1,195 USD
- Non-member: $1,395 USD
Standard (non-EBR)
- Member: $1,295 USD
- Non-member: $1,495 USD
- Group rate (non-member): $1,200 USD
Day passes
Day passes are ideal if you’re only attending for one or two days.
- 1 Day rate: $375 USD
- 1 Day rate + Gala Dinner: $525 USD
- 2 Day rate: $750 USD
- 2 Day rate + Gala Dinner: $900 USD
On-site purchase
Tickets purchased at the venue are subject to an additional fee.
- Door surcharge: $50 USD
Venue and Accomondation
The 28th Annual Conference will be held at the ICC Belfast – International Convention & Exhibition Centre.
Accommodation is available at the 4* Bullitt Hotel (approximately 7 minutes’ walk to ICC Belfast, and at Maldron Hotel Belfast City (14-minute walk to ICC Belfast). For full details, please see the link below.
Facility Visits
The Northern Ireland Prison Service, in collaboration with the Irish Prison Service, has arranged four prison facilities that participants can choose from. These facilities include Northern Ireland’s only high security facility and a joint facility for young males and female prisoners. For those staying on after the conference you can indicate which facility you would like to visit when registering online for this event, but please note that this is not a booking - you can only sign-up at the venue. Please note that spaces are limited.
Companion Programme
Sign up for our Companion Programme - unique experiences in Belfast for companions of delegates. Surprise a partner or family member to experience the vibrant culture, rich history, and stunning architecture of Belfast with our comprehensive three-day tour programme.
Over three days, we will visit Belfast's most beautiful attractions! Spaces are limited, sign up today! Tickets are $850 USD and include a three-day city tour, admission to the ICPA Welcome Reception (Sunday) and the Host Welcome Reception (Monday), as well as a ticket for the Gala Dinner & Awards Ceremony (Wednesday).
If you’ve already purchased a conference ticket and would like to add a Companion Programme ticket, please email c[email protected].
Travel Guidance for Travellers with Convictions
We have prepared guidance (available upon request) on travel from the USA to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland for anyone travelling with previous convictions, including how to declare convictions and what supporting evidence may be helpful. While this version is written with the USA in mind, the overall approach will be similar for travellers from other countries, with some differences in the application process. This is guidance only and does not guarantee approval or entry, as decisions are always made on a case-by-case basis. If you would like a copy of the guidance, or would like to talk it through, please reach out to [email protected].
General UK Visa & Entry Requirements
Depending on your nationality, you may need a Standard Visitor Visa or an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) before travelling to Belfast. European, US, Canadian, and other non-visa nationals do not require a full visitor visa, but must obtain a UK ETA prior to departure via the UK ETA App or officially online at gov.uk/eta (costs £20 and takes a few days to process; Irish citizens are exempt). If your passport requires a full UK visa, or if you need to check which entry requirement applies to your country, please visit the official UK Government portal at gov.uk/check-uk-visa.
Sponsorship Opportunities
Put your brand in front of the global corrections community at ICPA’s flagship annual conference. Join decision-makers and practitioners in Belfast, Northern Ireland for six days of connection, learning, and a true international reunion. Be seen. Build relationships. Generate qualified leads.
