Irish Penal Reform Trust Annual Lecture, Thursday April 22nd

national | crime and justice | press release Wednesday April 21, 2004 10:50 by Rick Lines, Executive Director - Irish Penal Reform Trust info at penal-reform dot ie Swanbrook House, Bloomfield Avenue, Dublin 4 01-668-0072

Vivien Stern, Secretary General of Penal Reform International, to speak in Dublin

The IPRT is pleased to welcome Baroness Vivien Stern to deliver the organisation’s 2004 Annual Lecture. She will be speaking on the topic of criminal justice and social justice.

Baroness Stern is Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for Prison Studies, King’s College, London. She is honorary Secretary General and co-founder of Penal Reform International, a network established in 1989 to promote prison reform throughout the world which currently has projects in 40 countries.

Baroness Stern’s lecture will be held Thursday April 22nd in the Swift Theatre, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin at 6:00pm. This event is free, and open to both members and non-members of the IPRT.

Baroness Stern has broad experience in criminal justice work and with non-governmental organisations. From 1977—1996 she was the Director of the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (NACRO), a UK-based non-governmental organisation concerned with the prevention of crime and the resettlement of ex-prisoners into society. In 2003 she became the Convenor of the Scottish Consortium on Crime and Criminal Justice. In 1999 she was made a life Peer in the British House of Lords.

Baroness Stern has travelled extensively working on prison reform issues, and has visited prisons in more than 30 countries. She has spoken and written widely on human rights and prison reform, and is the author of Imprisoned by Our Prisons: A Programme of Reform, Bricks of Shame: Britain's Prisons, and A Sin Against the Future: Imprisonment in the World.