Towards Global Prison Health Data (PID021)

1pm – 2pm GMT, 26 October 2026 ‐ 1 hour

Room: Meeting Room 2A (Level 3)

Parallel Workshops

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). We will circulate a draft of this Consensus Statement prior to the conference, and incorporate preliminary feedback, so that our deliberations in Belfast will be based on a well-developed draft. We will invite conference delegates and other relevant stakeholders to endorse the final draft of the Consensus Statement, which will then be published in a leading international journal and promoted via professional and social media channels.