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Event - 20 November: Meaningful human contact under international law
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Dr Deborah Russo, Queen’s University Belfast, speaking on “Meaningful human contact under international law: findings from a Scottish study.”
Join us on Wednesday 20 November, 1-2pm at 3.D.13, Sighthill campus, or join the event online.
For the next event in the Social Science Seminar Series, we welcome Dr Deborah Russo.
Dr Deborah Russo teaches Criminology, Criminal Justice, and Criminal Law at Queen’s University Belfast. She completed her PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 2024 which was on Segregation in Scottish Prisons in Comparative Context. Before her thesis, Deborah practised as a solicitor in the fields of human rights, prison and public law. She is a panel member and is now a chair in the Children’s Hearings System. She was appointed chair of the Scottish charity Zero Tolerance in February 2023.
This paper reflects on the notion of “meaningful human contact” relating to solitary confinement. Recent fieldwork carried out in Scottish prisons for the purposes of Dr Russo’s PhD suggests a different reality of meaningful human contact for prisoners and their everyday existence. “There is no such thing” is a direct quote from one the participants involved in the project, who, like others, did not place much value onto human contact in prison. This paper aims to explore this issue in further detail and flesh out how the reality of the isolation faced by prisoners could be better reflected in the language of international norms.
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