Corrections standards and guidelines

Provides links to national and international standards, guidelines and conventions applicable to the operation of correctional services.

Australia

• Standard guidelines for corrections in Australia
  These guiding principles are intended to show the spirit in which correctional programs should be administered and the goals towards which administrators should aim. The booklet outlines standard guidelines for corrections, community based corrections and prisons, including the management and security of prisons and the management of prisoners.
• Standards for juvenile custodial facilities (PDF 206kB)
  Australasian Juvenile Justice Administrators, revised edition, 1999
• Australian prison libraries : minimum standard guidelines
  The need for better standards in Australian prison libraries has been acknowledged by librarians in the field of corrections. In 1987 the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) convened a Working Party to produce these guidelines. The final publication was compiled for the Working Party by Philip Roberts.

Other countries

• Policy and procedures manual
  New Zealand Department of Corrections

International

• Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons (Council of Europe) | Additional Protocol to the Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons
  The Convention is primarily intended to facilitate the social rehabilitation of prisoners by giving foreigners convicted of a criminal offence the possibility of serving their sentences in their own countries. It is also rooted in humanitarian considerations, since difficulties in communication by reason of language barriers and the absence of contact with relatives may have detrimental effects on a person imprisoned in a foreign country.
• European Convention on the Supervision of Conditionally Sentenced or Conditionally Released Offenders
  The Convention aims to allow offenders to leave the territory of a party where a sentence was pronounced, or where the enforcement of a sentence has been conditionally suspended, to establish their ordinary residence in another party under the supervision of its authorities.
• European prison rules
  Council of Europe, 1987
• Handbook on probation services : guidelines for probation practitioners and managers (PDF 369kB)
  Jon H Klaus. United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, Commonwealth Secretariat. 1998
• International prison policy development instrument
  International Centre For Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy, first edition
• Making standards work : an international handbook on good prison practice (PDF 734kB)
  Penal Reform International, 1st edtion, 2001
• United Nations standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners
  These rules set out what is accepted to be good general principle and practice in the treatment of prisoners. They represent the minumum conditions which are accepted as suitable by the United Nations and, as such, are also intended to guard against mistreatment, particually in connection with the enforcement of discipline and the use of instruments of restraint in penal institutions.
• United Nations standard minimum rules for the administration of juvenile justice ("The Beijing Rules") 
  These rules have been developed to assist Member States to develop conditions that will ensure for the juvenile a meaningful life in the community, which, during that period in life when she or he is most susceptible to deviant behaviour, will foster a process of personal development and education that is as free from crime and delinquency as possible.
• Other United Nations international human rights instruments
  • Basic principles for the treatment of prisoners
  • Body of principles for the protection of all persons under any form of detention or imprisonment
  • Convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
  • Convention on the rights of the child
  • Declaration on the protection of all persons from being subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
  • Forced labour convention
  • International covenant on civil and political rights
  • Optional protocol to the international covenant on civil and political rights
  • United Nations rules for the protection of juveniles deprived of their liberty
  • Universal declaration of human rights
  • Full list of United Nations international human rights instruments