ACRI’s work over the past period has been varied in scope and has seen a number of litigation and public outreach successes on both a principled and particular level, examples of which include: a state decision to appoint Arab social workers to the counseling units associated with Israel’s family courts; a state commitment to act to reduce the waiting period for the submission of spousal residency applications for East Jerusalem residents; and the achievement of public access to parole board decisions. ACRI also launched a high-profile media campaign to raise awareness of the ongoing and widespread violations of the rights of subcontracted workers who are employed through manpower agencies. The campaign calls on employers to personally ensure that these workers are granted the rights that they are entitled to by law. In the upcoming period, ACRI will continue its work to provide the weakened sectors of the population with the necessary tools, support and legal services they require to make their voices heard.

I thank you again for your continuing support of our work, which is a vital element of all our actions. To further ACRI’s impact both domestically and internationally please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you feel would be interested in our work. 

Lila Margalit has been working intensively since 2002 to defend the rights of Israel’s prison population through landmark litigation and tenacious legal advocacy. By so doing she has helped to give a voice to one of Israel’s most isolated sectors. In the following interview she reflects on the most poignant aspects of her work over the last four years, and considers newly identified issues that ACRI is currently working on.

Question: The decision to construct Israel’s first prison is a radical one. What in particular concerns you?

I think what mainly concerns us is that when you take an authority  like the power to hold people behind bars, with its inherent potential for human rights violations, and hand it over to an organization whose primary motivation is financial gain, you are effectively taking one of the state’s most fundamental roles and entrusting it to a private body who does not necessarily have the public’s, or the prisoners', interest at heart. One of our main concerns, for example, is that the quality of the personnel may be drastically reduced because in order for the prison to be profitable, the prison’s ongoing expenses have to be cut and one of the first places we have seen in the world where expenses are cut, are staff salaries. This leads to a lower quality of personnel and a higher turnover, and to a situation where instead of having the same people running the prison over a long period of time who develop a certain level of expertise, you have a constant flow of new and inexperienced personnel. We are also concerned that other basic services that are provided for the prisoners will be minimal and will not reflect their real needs. Ultimately the concern is that once a private prison is up and running the state won’t be able to effectively supervise its management, and even if theoretically the state has various steps at its disposal to act against mismanagement or rights’ violations, it is doubtful that these steps will be put into effect.

Click here for the rest of the interview