Open Society Foundations Book order (chronological)

On any particular day, around three million people are being held in pretrial detention, and during the course of a year an estimated 10 million people pass through pretrial detention. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the positive impact that early intervention by lawyers and paralegals can have on pretrial justice generally--and on the use of pretrial detention in particular--and to provide a guide to the ways in which lawyer and paralegal schemes can be established. It sets out to demonstrate the benefits not only for the individuals who are advised and assisted, but for the efficiency and effectiveness of criminal justice systems, and for wider society.

Television, a pillar of democracy and open societies, is changing at a breakneck pace. Patterns of production, transmission, consumption, marketing, financing, and ownership are all in flux. To take the measure of these changes and assess their impact on the independence of television especially in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe--the Open Society Institute has mapped the main developments in broadcasting legislation, policy, and markets in nine countries: Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Italy, Lithuania, the Republic of Macedonia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. These countries were previously included in the 2005 Television Across Europe monitoring project. The new reports are sequels, measuring the progress--or lack thereof--in improving the independence and pluralism of broadcasting over the past three years. As with the previous series of reports, these surveys are addressed to policymakers, civil society activists, and academics, as a contribution to bringing about change where it is needed.