ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to make a contribution to penal and prison studies through developing innovative, critical and robust approaches to major monitoring strategies and their impacts on national states. It compares the key contributions that the mapping of monitoring activities across Europe has produced. The chapter provides an overview of what is European about modernisation through European monitoring and what is local and distinct within the history and political system of the nation state. The responses to criticism by the Committee for the Prevention of Torture range from agreement with them and promises to take action to direct denials, which are, however, fairly rare. The Council of Europe and European Union monitoring has led also in certain countries to minor changes in their penal and prison policies as the Italian case reveals. The chapter focuses on the future perspectives of the European monitoring and the evolving reactions that it is generating at a national and local level.
