Rick Lines

Rick Lines
Swansea University | SWAN · School of Social Science and Humanities

PhD, Law; LLM, International Human Rights Law; MA, Sociology

About

73
Publications
26,236
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Introduction
Head of Substance Misuse and Vulnerable Populations, Public Health Wales. Professor, School of Social Sciences, Swansea University. Co-Director, Global Drug Policy Observatory. Co-Founder and Chair, International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, Human Rights Centre, University of Essex. Former Executive Director of Harm Reduction International (2010-2018). Author of ‘Drug Control and Human Rights in International Law' (CUP, 2017).

Publications

Publications (73)
Article
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This paper explores the health rights of prisoners as defined in international law, and the mechanisms that have been used to ensure the rights of persons in detention to realise the highest attainable standard of health. It examines this right as articulated within United Nations and regional human rights treaties, non-binding or so-called soft la...
Article
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It is generally accepted that people in prison have a right to a standard of health care equivalent to that available outside of prisons. This ‘‘principle of equivalence’’ is one that enjoys broad consensus among international health and human rights instruments and organisations. However, given the extreme health problems evident in prisons worldw...
Article
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Background: This study examines the use of new psychoactive substances (NPS) and the harm reduction response in six Eurasian countries: Belarus, Moldova, Serbia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia. The aim is to identify current patterns of NPS use and related harms in each country through recording the perspectives and lived experience of people...
Article
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This paper highlights seven priority areas and best practices for improving Hepatitis C prevention, treatment and care in prisons and other correctional settings.
Article
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This is the first detailed examination of compulsory detention for ‘drug treatment’ through the lens of a rapidly evolving international legal framework. It is estimated that as many as half a million people worldwide are detained for the purpose of ‘drug treatment’, many held for months or years at a time without being charged criminally or being...
Article
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Harm reduction has become increasingly influential in drug policy and practice, but has developed primarily around adult drug use. Theoretical, practical, ethical and legal issues pertaining to children and adolescents under the age of majority – both relating to their own use and the effects of drug use among parents or within the family – are les...
Chapter
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This chapter examines the engagement and progress on human rights by the United Nations drug control regime from 2008-2018 through a comparative qualitative assessment of the official work of four principle political and normative institutions: the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, the International Narcotics Control Board, the Human Rights Council and...
Article
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This Health and Human Rights Journal Viewpoint explores the link between prison overcrowding, punitive drugs laws and the COVID-19 response. Using historical cases of 'gaol fever' in British prisons as a reference point, it makes the case that the COVID-19 pandemic should lead to a radical rethinking of the drug laws that drive mass incarceration....
Article
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This Health and Human Rights Viewpoint explores the challenges of addressing drug control through a human rights lens, and dicusses the new Internatiojnal Guidelines on Human Rights and Drug Policy. https://www.hhrjournal.org/2020/01/what-does-it-mean-to-adopt-a-human-rights-based-approach-to-drug-policy/
Conference Paper
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Human dignity is a fundamental principle within international human rights law, and is a status described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as one 'inherent' to 'all members of the human family'. However, since the 1980s, dignity (or more specifically the protection or restoration of dignity) it is also a concept increasingly found in dr...
Article
Treaty interpretation has long been a subject of interest for international legal scholars. However, it is only recently that advocates for drug policy reform have taken up these questions. This article examines the proposition put forward by several authors that a legally regulated market in cannabis may be permissible under the international drug...
Chapter
This chapter summarizes from both international and national law and guidelines the human rights protections enjoyed by prisoners, including those that are especially relevant to people who use drugs. It describes the reality of how those protections are often flouted and makes recommendations for policy and practice that would be conducive to prot...
Book
Human rights violations occurring as a consequence of drug control and enforcement are a growing concern, and raise questions of treaty interpretation and of the appropriate balancing of concomitant obligations within the drug control and human rights treaty regimes. Tracing the evolution of international drug control law since 1909, this book expl...
Article
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HIV, hepatitis C virus (HCV), and TB in prisons and other places of detention are serious public health concerns, with prevalence and incidence considerably higher than in the general community because of the overrepresentation of risky behavior, substandard conditions, overcrowding, people who inject drugs, and the wholly inadequate prevention, ca...
Conference Paper
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Article
Worldwide, a disproportionate burden of HIV, tuberculosis, and hepatitis is present among current and former prisoners. This problem results from laws, policies, and policing practices that unjustly and discriminatorily detain individuals and fail to ensure continuity of prevention, care, and treatment upon detention, throughout imprisonment, and u...
Article
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No abstract available. (Published: 20 April 2016) Citation: C ook C et al. Journal of the International AIDS Society 2016, 19 :21129 http://www.jiasociety.org/index.php/jias/article/view/21129 | http://dx.doi.org/10.7448/IAS.19.1.21129
Article
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The year 2011 marks the 50th anniversary of the ratification of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (1961). Although the preamble of the Single Convention states that the treaty is intended to promote 'the health and welfare of mankind,' it goes on to characterise 'drug addiction' as 'a serious evil.' This paper explores the tensions between hu...
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This article provides an in-depth analysis of the international law ramifications of applying the death penalty for drug offences. It reviews the the ‘most serious crimes’ threshold for the lawful application of capital punishment as established in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It then explores the question of whether dr...
Chapter
Until the enactment of enabling legislation in 2006, Ireland occupied a strange no man's land in relation to the voting rights of its prisoners. Prisoners were not divested of these rights by legislation and therefore in theory continued to enjoy the right to vote under article 16 of the Irish Constitution. Indeed, as pointed out by the Supreme Cou...
Article
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The Dublin Declaration on Partnership to fight HIV/AIDS in Europe and Central Asia is the key policy document on HIV/AIDS in the European Region as a whole Among the Declaration's 33 actions for governments are many that apply to prison populations. Based upon an analysis of these commitments, and a review of the current status of states in meeting...
Article
This commentary explores the conflict within the United Nations system when it comes to issues of human rights and drugs. Specifically, it addresses the challenges of advocating for harm reduction within the UN drug control system, and the opportunities for utilising UN human rights mechanisms as a tool.
Article
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High rates of HIV infection and injecting drug use are major concerns in prisons across Europe. There is a broad international consensus that people in prison are entitled to a standard of health care equivalent to that available outside of prisons, yet only four Council of Europe countries provide sterile syringes to prisoners as an HIV prevention...
Article
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The European Convention on Human Rights can be used to advocate for the provision of syringe exchange programs in prisons, says Rick Lines in this article, which is based on a presentation at an abstract-driven session at the conference. The author outlines the arguments that states might use to avoid having to implement syringe exchange programs,...
Article
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HIV/AIDS is a serious health threat for prison populations in many countries, and presents significant challenges for prison and public health authorities. This situation is often exacerbated by high rates of hepatitis and/or tuberculosis. The generally accepted principle that prisons and prisoners remain part of the broader community means that th...
Article
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This article examines the issue of prison needle-exchange programmes (PNEP) based upon the international experience and evidence in six countries. A review of existing literature was undertaken together with original research comprising site visits to prison needle-exchange programmes in four countries operating such initiatives in October 2002. Du...
Article
HIV/AIDS is a serious problem for prison populations across Europe and Central Asia. In most countries, rates of HIV infection are many times higher among prisoners than among the population outside prisons. This situation is often exacerbated by high rates of hepatitis C and/or (multi‐drug resistant) tuberculosis in many countries. In most cases,...
Article
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Throughout most of the world, the primary response to problems associated with illicit injection drug use has been to intensify law enforcement efforts. This strategy has contributed to an unprecedented growth in prison populations and growing concerns regarding drug-related harm within prisons. Despite the presence of international laws and guidel...
Conference Paper
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An overview of prison needle and syringe exchange programmes in six countries
Article
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In March, 2003, the Prisoners' HIV/AIDS Support Action Network (PASAN) released Unlocking Our Futures: A National Study on Women, Prisons, HIV and Hepatitis C, a qualitative, evaluative study investigating the perceptions and lived experiences of federally incarcerated women regarding HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C (HCV).
Article
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In November, a group of twelve community-based HIV/AIDS organizations and service providers announced their decision to withdraw from participation in consultation processes and committees of the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC).
Article
Two studies from the Department of Community Health and General Practice at Trinity College, Dublin, have highlighted the extent of the HIV and hepatitis C (HCV) crisis in Irish prisons. The studies confirm that rates of HIV and HCV are disproportionately high in Irish prisons, and that high risk behaviours are commonplace.
Technical Report
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Review of HIV prevention, care, treatment and support services in Canadian prisons.
Article
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In many Western countries, including Canada, seroprevalence rates in prisons have reached epidemic levels, with infection rates among prisoners many times higher than among people outside prisons.
Article
AIDS Billy Bell, a prisoner at Millhaven Institution in Kingston, Ontario, died in May 1996. He had been diagnosed with full-blown AIDS in early 1995, and soon afterwards with AIDS-related cryptococcal meningitis. A coroner's inquest into Bell's death in 1997 found that Billy had died alone, after suffering from low-quality care and a lack of compa...
Article
AIDS Canadian public officials are demanding that prisons segregate HIV-positive individuals and require mandatory HIV testing similar to the procedures used in correctional institutions in the United States. These measures have been consistently rejected as ineffective and punitive in Canada. The commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada...
Article
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1. Background Tattooing is an art practiced by Canadians from all walks of life. It is also a popular form of personal expression among Canadian prison populations. While tattooing in the general community is legal, and practiced under sterile conditions that minimize risks of disease transmission, infection, and dermal damage, it is a prohibited p...
Article
1. vyd. v jazyce českém Přeloženo z angličtiny Pod názvem: Národní monitorovací středisko pro drogy a drogové závislosti, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network

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