WINNIPEG — Gary Hill, left, an international consultant in crime prevention and corrections, recently told the Jewish  Students Association here that when he visited Israeli prisons, he found them to be well run and efficient.

That, however, was not the case when he visited the prison in Ramallah in the West Bank, operated by the Palestinian Authority.

Hill, an American Jew, has developed training programs for prison staff in Israel, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and other areas of conflict in the world

 “The Israeli prison system is a well-run  professional organization that does have strict oversight by the court, and if you don’t get into the discussion of whether some of the people, especially suspected terrorists, should be in prison or not, there are few who would argue that the prison system is not run humanely,” he said.

Hill, who has visited Israel more than 50 times, said he has worked with Israeli prison staff on treatment programs for offenders, including one related to violence against women, and he has worked with prison staff on programs in conjunction with the incarceration of suspected or convicted terrorists.

Hill said he has had an insider’s view of the Palestinian justice system between the first and second Palestinian intifadahs, from 1992 to 2000. During that time, he “worked at the behest of the Saudi governments with the prisons in Gaza and Ramallah,” he said.

Hill said that under the Palestinian Authority, “the prison in Gaza was well-run and humane, and the one in Ramallah was not. In that case, it had to do with the management of the individuals in charge, because the [Palestinian Authority] territorial government had neither the training, nor the experience to run a national prison system and so things were left to the individuals in charge of each institution.”

He also said that in the prison in Gaza, which was at the time under the control of the Palestinian Authority, “one-third of the prisoners were criminals, one-third of the prisoners were people that Hamas felt collaborated with the Israelis, and [Hamas had] pressured the [PA] government to keep [them] imprisoned.

“The other one-third of the prisoners were felt by the Israelis to be members of organizations they did not trust, such as Hamas, and so they pressured the PA government to keep them in prison.”

Hill has also developed human rights and crime prevention manuals for the United Nations.

He co-ordinates non-governmental organizations, individual experts, academics and professional associations who work with the United Nation’s Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice program.

On the United Nation’s treatment of Israel, Hill said, “Israel is not accorded the same courtesy and opportunities in the UN structure as just about every other member. There are committees that Israel cannot be part of, and they cannot sit as equals within their regional block.”

Regarding the upcoming “Durban II” conference, a followup to the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Hill said, “I think there will be some statements and activities that can easily be interpreted as anti-Semitic, but I don’t think the conference itself will be predominantly an anti-Jewish meeting.”

Hill said that the United Nations has a helpful role to play in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“The only organization with the ability to provide the type of peacekeeping and peace-building network that will eventually be helpful is the United Nations. The weakness of the UN is that it’s an organization of 192 governments and must get all of its personnel and resources donated by those governments,” he said.

“Each government comes with its own baggage and philosophy. So the effectiveness of the UN… is diminished because of the political pulls from both sides. But other nations [such as France, the United States or Canada], though they can be helpful and influential on their own, come with their own baggage that one side or the other sees as a detriment. Thus, I think it must be the UN with the ultimate ability to help pull all sides.”