Edition 8: September 2014 - In This Issue:
EUROPRIS INTERVIEW

Colin McConnell

Chief Executive Scottish Prison Service 

In this issue EuroPris talks with Colin McConnell, Chief Executive Scottish Prison Service

 

EuroPris: How many Prison establishments do you oversee?

Colin McConnell: 13 public sector prisons and 2 private sector contractor-managed prisons.


How many prisoners are in prison at the moment in Scotland?

7,800

How many staff do you manage?

4,400


What are in your opinion the required attributes and qualifications of someone wanting to be a prison officer?

Qualities of a Prison Officer: integrity, self-confidence and personal resilience; commitment to see things through...Click here to read the full interview.
EUROPRIS NEWS
Criminal Justice Platform - International Seminar
18 September, Brussels 
 

The Criminal Justice Platform (CJP) consisting of EuroPris, (Probation) CEP and (Restorative Justice) EFRJ decided to focus their joint work on victims' issues.

In a seminar hosted by the Representation of the Government of Catalonia to the EU experts and policy makers will be brought together to discuss the implications of cutting edge work on desistance and the impact of imprisonment.  The Dutch researcher Peter van der Laan will give a presentation on "The intended and unintended outcome of detention" and Ioan Donescu (lecturer at Bucharest university) will talk about "Why and how offenders stop offending: the evidence".

Download the invitation and the programme of the CJP International Seminar. 


Foreign Nationals Workshop

20-21 October, London

 

Foreign National Prisoners is an issue of growing importance for European Prison Services.

EuroPris and CEP decided to address this issue jointly and developed, with the support of their Foreign Nationals in Prison expert group, an agenda for the workshop. Download the provisional agenda. The workshop will focus on a comparison between prisons with 100% FNP and FNP dominated prisons and deal with the issues of release, resettlement and reintegration of FNPs. There will also be an opportunity to visit Maidstone prison, which is a 100% FNP prison. 

Registration deadline is 30th September. If you are interested in participating you can register using the on-line registration form. More information on the workshop, who can participate, the venue of the event and other logistical details can be found on our website

 

Forecasting Workshop

13-15 November, Oslo


 
In 2012 the Swedish Prison Service organised the first workshop in Stockholm on the topic of Forecasting Prison Capacities/International Prognosis, an initiative that came from the Roundtable for Correctional Excellence. In 2013 the Roundtable transferred the Forecasting workshop initiative to EuroPris with the request to organise the second workshop on this topic as planned in 2014. The workshop is hosted by the Norwegian Correctional Training Academy (KRUS) in Oslo. The main issues that will be discussed are Prison Forecasting/Capacity Planning, Trendbreaks and Big dataDownload the provisional agenda

If you are interested in participateing please register by 20th October using the on-line registration formMore information on the workshop, who can participate, the venue of the event and other logistical details can be found on our website

 

PROJECT NEWS
Improving Conditions Related to Detention

 

This project consists of three seminars, one of which will take place in Strasbourg in 2014 and two in 2015 in Strasbourg and Trier respectively. Each seminar will have a specific focus. 

The first seminar takes place from 6-7 November and will deal with the following issues: The European Convention's, European Court of Human Rights' and national courts' roles in improving conditions related to detention. Topics will be relevant ECHR articles, case law, pre-trial detention, judicial practice in in improving matters related to detention and Framework Decisions on transfer of prisoners, on probation and alternative sanction and on the European Supervision Order and EAW. For more information and registration of participation please click here. 

 

IDECOM: Innovation, Development and Communication for a better staff training in Prison System

 

In a strategic partnership EuroPris joined forces with Romania, Portugal, Moldova and Turkey, who submitted a project proposal to the Erasmus+ Romanian National Agency. The IDECOM project aimed at the development and implementation of new educational methods in the training of a wide range of prison staff (prison officers, administrative staff, psychologists, social reintegration staff) focusing on transversal skills (such as innovation, entrepreneurship, communication teamwork, and ICT) and on developing and piloting innovative education for inmates. The project was awarded and will start later this year.


ECOPRIS: Ecological Economics in Prison Work Administration

 

The ECOPRIS project has recently been approved for funding by the ERASMUS + Portuguese National Agency and will start later this year. Next to EuroPris the project partners are from Portugal, Romania and Turkey. Since employment is a key factor in reducing re-offending the project aims to provide prisoners with the skills they need to get a job upon release and with the motivation to turn away from crime. The ecological economics relate to sustainable economic activities.

  

JCN: Justice Cooperation Network - European Treatment of and Transition Management of High Risk Offenders

 

The final conference of the EU-Project JCN took place in Rostock-Warnem�nde, Germany from 3 - 5 September 2014. 

The Conference featured presentations on the findings from the JCN project, contributions from experts and workshop discussions. Focusing on high risk offenders or dangerous offenders in particular, their resettlement and re-integration into society was the main topic of the presentation of JCN project results. Vice-president of EuroPris, Karin Dotter-Schiller gave an opening address at the conference. 

The dissemination of the project results will soon follow on the project website: http://jcn.pixel-online.org

Read more on the conference here

 

JIVE: Justice Involving Volunteers in Europe

 

Penal Justice Reform Foundation is pleased to announce the release of the second issue of the Justice Involving Volunteers in Europe (JIVE) project newsletter. You can view this here.

JIVE is a 2 year project funded by the European Commission and forms a partnership of 8 non-governmental organisations from across Europe working within the Criminal Justice System (CJS).

The project is lead by UK based charity Clinks and will concentrate on two areas; the role and value of volunteers within the CJS, and working effectively in partnership with statutory and private organisations.  This newsletter provides regular updates about the work and progress of the JIVE project as well as useful resources for third sector organisations, networks and volunteers within Europe working within the CJS. 

 

STEPS2 Resettlement:

 

The STEPS 2 Resettlement project is organising its second board meeting this month in London. NOMS will host this in conjunction with HM Prison Maidstone. Key activities that this project has undertaken during the previous period has been interviewing Romanian prisoners in Spain and Italy. This has been organised by the project staff working for Huelva University, Spain and in partnership with the University of Bucharest. The prisoner's journey will be tracked from the issuing states prison through to the executing states prison. In the meantime NOMS is arranging to meet with offenders in three of its prisons to interview the offenders to establish their concerns when faced with transfer under the Framework Decision. This work will lead to an Offenders information booklet. The booklet will be available in English, Romanian and Spanish. It will also be uploaded onto the EuroPris website so that other Prison Services can use it. In addition, the project will research the effect that the transfer process will have on the victims. The project will produce guidance that will help authorities understand the impact that the transfer may have on victims. EuroPris will keep its readers up to date on the progress of this exciting project.

 

PRESSROOM

  

PRISON RELATED ARTICLES    
  • Changing Lives Together Newsletter featuring an article on No Offence! [read article]
  • Include prisoners in clinical trials, say European scientists [read article]
  • Foreign prisoners have it too easy in Danish prisons, says Venstre [read article]
  • NL - Personal Distress and Alarm Systems: Call to share visions, opinions and experiences [read discussion]
  • England and Wales: New initiative launched to rehabilitate female offenders [read article]
  • Why your worst deeds don't define you [watch the video]
  • CPT has published the report on its most recent visit to Germany [read report] 
  • The response of the German government to the CPT report [read report]
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EUROPRIS EXPERT GROUPS

Research and Statistics Expert Group Meeting

 

On 1 and 2 September 2014, EuroPris held the second meeting of the Research and Statistics Expert Group in Edinburgh, at the Scottish Prison Service headquarters. The group was comprised of representatives from 7 European National Agencies (Croatia, Finland, Ireland Netherlands, Romania, Scotland and Slovenia) and invited as an observer Roy Walmsley from the International Centre for Prison Studies.

The work of the Expert Group focused on the review, future developments and improvements of the European Prison Information System. Also, the group discussed future benchmarking exercises of EuroPris and a proposal for a hybrid/streamlined benchmarking exercise. To find out more, don't miss our next newsletter when we will publish the report of the Research and Statistics Expert Group Meeting. 

 

FD 909 Expert meeting

 

The next EuroPris expert meeting on the transfer of offenders under the European Framework Decision 909 is just days away. The representatives at the meeting come from the UK, The Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Romania, Estonia and Ireland. The European Commission and EJN will also be represented at the meeting. The delegation will look at the Framework Decision 909 and examine elements of it to see how it works in practice. The group will take the recommendations from the previous two meetings and examine how the Framework Decision has responded to these and how it has evolved. The group of experts will study scenarios and case studies and suggest how Member States can streamline the transfer process. Other issues to be examined include, human rights, Consent - Legal challenges, practicalities for prisoners to challenge, certificate and timings, practical transfer arrangements, sentence adaptation and delivery.

A report on the outcomes of the meeting will be downloaded onto the EuroPris website and a full report will be available in the next newsletter out in November. A copy of the draft agenda can be found here.

EDUCATION BEHIND FOREIGN PRISON BARS
September's feature article
 
September's featured article comes from Frans Lemmers, Maastricht University
 
This month's feature article is a report by Frans Lemmers, an external PhD candidate affiliated to the Criminal Law and Criminology Group at the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University. The article looks at educational programmes for foreign prisoners in European countries and  focuses on five results from a study of 24 contacts of the European Prison Education Association. The key findings of the report are: In practice, foreign prisoners are usually deprived of education, education is often not part of a detention plan for foreign prisoners, foreign prisoners who do participate in educational programmes often cannot continue or complete these programmes after their release, the prison authorities are dissatisfied with the current situation but do not think they can do anything about it and the recommendations of the Council of Europe are not implemented.
 
Click here to read the full report.
DOCUMENT LIBRARY
  1. Updated State of Play: EU FRAMEWORK DECISIONS 909, 947, 829;  
  2. Competent Authority Tables for Framework Decisions 2008/909/JHA, 2008/947/JHA and 2009/829/JHA;
  3. Declarations by Member State for Framework Decisions 2008/909/JHA,  2008/947/JHA and 2009/829/JHA;
  4. FD 909 prisoner transfer information form;
  5. Agenda and invitation to the Criminal Justice Platform International Seminar
  6. Agenda Foreign Nationals in Prison Workshop
  7. Agenda Forecasting Workshop
  8. Report on the 7th European Penitentiary Training Academies Conference, Barcelona, 25-27 June 2014

FORTHCOMING EVENTS
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