Prison Oversight: Improving Rights in Europe (POIRE)
Trinity College Law School
About the Project
Prison Oversight: Improving Rights in Europe (POIRE) is a European Research Council-funded project, led by Prof. Mary Rogan.
The purpose of this study is to better understand how senior prison officials as well as people in prison, understand and engage with the CPT.
Objectives of our work
The POIRE project has received funding under the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101069413.
POIRE Team
| Title | Name |
|---|---|
| Principle Investigator: | Professor Mary Rogan |
| Research Fellow: | Dr. Niamh Wade |
| Research Assistant: | Thais Pacheco Menezes |
Consultative Council
The POIRE project is grateful for the support and assistance of an international Consultative Forum. Members of the Consultative Forum provide guidance, suggestions and advice to the research team on the project. Members of the Consultative Forum act in an advisory capacity.
The members of the Consultative Forum are Dr. Ciara O’Connell, Mark Kelly, Dr. Sarah Curristan, Dr. Julia Kozma, Sarah Cooke and Dr. Eva Aizpurua, Prof. Christine Morgenstern, and Marco Leidekker. Further information can be found below.
Dr. Ciara O’Connell
Dr. Ciara O’Connell joined the Office of the Inspector of Prisons in December 2020. Prior to this, Ciara was Deputy Principal Investigator and Research Fellow with the PRILA (Prisons: the Rule of Law, Accountability and Rights) project, based out of Trinity College Dublin. In this role, she examined the experience of prison oversight from the perspective of people in prison and prison staff, specifically in Ireland, Scotland and Norway.
Ciara’s background also includes research on gender and human rights, with a particular focus on gendered harm in the African and Inter-American regional human rights contexts. In 2018, she was a recipient of the Vice Chancellor Postdoctoral Fellowship Award at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Previously, Ciara held positions and carried out consultancy work with the Centre for Human Rights (South Africa), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (USA).
Ciara holds a PhD in Law (University of Sussex, UK) and LLM in International Human Rights Law (Irish Centre for Human Rights, NUI Galway). She has expertise in qualitative research methods and analysis, and data collection in prisons.
Mark Kelly
Mark Kelly is an international human rights lawyer who has extensive international and national experience in the areas of monitoring prisons, police custody and administrative detention. He was appointed as Chief Inspector of Prisons by the Minister for Justice in August 2022 and is the Chief Inspector Designate of the Office for the Inspection of Places of Detention, which will be designated as the National Preventive Mechanism for the criminal justice sector in Ireland under the Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention Against Torture (OPCAT).
In 2014, he was elected by the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers to that organisation’s European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), on which he served as Vice-President from 2017-2021.
Previously, he has served as a Commissioner of the Irish Human Rights Commission and a member of the Board of the Equality Authority of Ireland, pending the creation of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, to which the President of Ireland appointed him as Commissioner in 2014. Mark is also a former Head of Division in the Secretariat of the Council of Europe’s CPT (1991 – 2000) and former Executive Director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (2006-2016).
Dr. Sarah Curristan
Sarah joined the Office of the Inspector of Prisons in April 2023. Sarah holds a B.A. in psychology (Trinity College Dublin), an M.A. in cognitive science (University College Dublin), a Pg.Dip. in statistics (Trinity College Dublin), and has worked extensively in social science research.
She recently completed her PhD at the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin. Her doctoral research examined the experiences of prison staff and prison management of human rights based mechanisms of oversight, including inspection and complaints.
Prior to joining the OIP, Sarah served on the Visiting Committee for Cloverhill prison and worked in the Economic and Social Research Institute where she conducted research in the areas of social inclusion.
Dr. Julia Kozma
Julia Kozma holds a PhD in International Criminal Law and a Master’s Degree in Human Rights and Peace Support Operations in addition to her legal degree.
She has twenty years of experience in monitoring places of detention. In 2004, she started as legal researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights, Vienna, and monitored police work in the framework of the Human Rights Advisory Board at the Austrian Interior Ministry; in 2008 she became senior legal researcher at the University of Vienna. From 2008 to 2012 she was head of the team “Human Dignity and Public Security” at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute.
From 2005 until 2010 she worked for the mandate of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, and participated in various fact-finding missions (Nepal, Jordan, Togo, Sri Lanka, Moldova, Uruguay, and Jamaica), as well as in the drafting of the UN Special Procedures’ report on Guantánamo Bay.
In December 2009 the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe elected her member of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) in respect of Austria; she was twice re-elected and has served the Committee for a total of twelve years. She has carried out 36 CPT missions and has visited countless police stations and prisons as well as other places of deprivation of liberty in diverse countries, and has contributed to shaping the CPT’s standards for persons deprived of their liberty.
In mid-2016, she became independent consultant on prison, police and monitoring matters, while pursuing her post-doc research on measures against impunity. In 2022, she was elected member of the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) and continues to monitor places of deprivation of liberty worldwide.
Additionally, she is a lecturer in human rights and Master course responsible at the University of Strasbourg. She has broad teaching and training experience and has written diverse reports and publications on human rights and torture related issues.
Sarah Cooke OBE
Sarah, a qualified lawyer, was previously the Chief Executive of the British Institute of Human Rights. As a human rights consultant for the past 17 years, she has worked extensively on human rights and detention with a focus on best practice in monitoring closed environments, both internationally and the UK. She is currently engaged in work for UK National Preventive Mechanism providing guidance and training on how to monitor detention settings to prevent ill treatment. She worked as a monitor with the Care Quality Commission in England which oversees mental health detention and for the last five years she has been a judge on the Mental Health Tribunal (UK).
Dr. Eva Aizpurua
Eva Aizpurua, PhD, is an experienced survey methodologist with a broad range of experience across academia, the private sector, and non-profit organizations. As a Research Director at NatCen, she focuses on developing optimal designs for social surveys undergoing remodelling. Previously, Eva worked as a Research Scientist on the Demography & Survey Science team at Meta. She has also held Research Fellow positions at the European Social Survey Headquarters and Trinity College Dublin, and was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Northern Iowa. Eva currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief for Survey Practice.
Prof. Christine Morgenstern
Christine Morgenstern has held the Chair of Criminology in Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany since October 1, 2023. Her research focuses on the areas of
More information here.
Marco Leidekker
Marco Leidekker is a Head of Division at the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) at the Council of Europe.
Our Research
The POIRE project seeks to create two programmes called the State Reporting Training (SRT) programme and the Prisoner Awareness Initiative (PAI). The SRT programme aims to improve the capacity of state actors, specifically government officials and prison administration officials tasked with responding to the CPT, to engage with that body effectively. The PAI programme aims to identify awareness levels amongst people in prison of the CPT, barriers to engagement, and needs for support, and to support improved awareness and engagement amongst prisoners.
Further information on the project and its objectives can be found at: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101069413.
Research Partners
We are seeking to partner with a country to be visited by the European Committee on the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment (CPT) in 2025 in order to learn more about preparations for a CPT visit by senior staff, as well as the understanding of the CPT amongst people in prison. We hope that the research will support an improved understanding of CPT visits and provide support to officials and prison administrations getting ready for a CPT visit, as well as improve understanding of the CPT amongst people in prison.
Could your country help?
The following countries are scheduled for visits by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) in 2025:
As part of the POIRE Project led by Prof. Mary Rogan and funded by the European Research Council, we are currently contacting justice officials and prison administrations in these countries to introduce the project and to extend an invitation to participate. We are asking you to consider if your country can support this research and to respond to this invitation when you have received it.
The purpose of this study is to gain insights from the experiences of senior prison administrators in their interactions with the CPT and to conduct research into the specific needs of individuals in prison. Further information on the project and its objectives can be found at: POIRE Project Information. More information on the PRILA project, from which this project derives, can be found at: PRILA Project Background.
The POIRE project has received ethical approval from Trinity College Dublin, and we are willing to undergo any further ethical processes as required. We wish to clarify that we are completely independent of the CPT. However, the CPT has agreed to be a member of the project’s Consultative Forum and supports the research in principle. We do not work for the CPT in any capacity.
If you have any questions about the project, or wish to participate, please contact the POIRE Principal Investigator at mary.rogan@tcd.ie.
Contact POIRE
If you have any questions about the project, or wish to participate, please contact the POIRE Principal Investigator at mary.rogan@tcd.ie.
