Edition 9: November 2014 - In This Issue:
EUROPRIS INTERVIEW
Pere Soler
Director General of Penitentiary Services of the Catalan Government.

EuroPris: Could you tell us about your career path? Why have you chosen to work in the prison and correctional field?

Pere Soler: Until last year my professional life was not related to this field at all. I was working as a lawyer. In 2011 I also became councilman of the opposition party in the town council of Terrassa. When I received the call from the Minister of Justice I decided that, despite it could be a challenging position, working in this field was one of the best jobs you can do as a civil servant to make a better society.


How many Prison establishments do you oversee?

14 prisons and 1 Penitentiary Hospital Pavilion


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

9,451


How many staff do you manage?

4,845

 

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

With regard to individual qualities, the most valued are: self-esteem, resilience...click here to read the full interview.
EUROPRIS NEWS
Foreign Nationals in Prison Workshop
20-21 October, London

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

EuroPris and CEP decided to address this issue jointly and developed with the support of their FNP expert group an agenda for the workshop. The workshop was attended by 60 participants from 14 countries and 17 Prison and Probation agencies. 

The workshop focused on a comparison between prisons with 100% FNP and FNP dominated prisons and deal with the issues of release, resettlement and reintegration of FNPs. 

Presentations from the workshop can be downloaded on our website here

The participants at the workshop also had the opportunity to visit Maidstone prison, which is a 100% FNP prison.

 

 

Forecasting Workshop

13-14 November, Oslo

EuroPris has organised the second Forecasting workshop on 13-14 November 2014 and hosted by the Norwegian Correctional Training Academy (KRUS) in Oslo.  

Presentations included topics such as Prison Forecasting, Capacity Planning, Trend Breaks and Big data and Data Crossed. The event was attended by 20 people from 10 countries, which allowed participants to have in-depth discussions, ask questions and share their own experience. EuroPris was encouraged to continue its work in Forecasting and organise another workshop in two years.

Follow us on our website for the presentations from the Forecasting workshop that will be published in the coming weeks

 

 

ICPA 15th AGM and Conference




International Prisons and Corrections Association (ICPA) conference 'From Incarceration to reintegration. Change with a purpose' was held between 26 - 31st October in Windhoek, Namibia
EuroPris President Hans Meurisse and EuroPris Vice-President Karin Dotter Schiller were both participating at the conference. 
 

 

 

 

PROJECT NEWS

 

STEPS2 Resettlement

The second project board meeting for the STEPS2 Resettlement project took place in London from 30 September to 1 October. Both EuroPris and NOMS were present along with the University of Ghent, De Montfort University, CEP, Ministry of Justice The Netherlands, University of Bucharest, Huelva Prison, University of Huelva and Romanian Prison Administration. The board discussed the progress so far and in particular the surveys that had been received from different Prison Administrations across Europe regarding the current IT systems in place for transferring prisoner information. This information will then be used in a focus group to determine the problems and possibly solutions when transferring prisoner data from one country to another. Following this an expert group will look at the possible IT solutions that could be implemented across Europe to improve the transfer of prisoners. The other workstreams within the project will deal with determining policy issues, victims issues and offenders concerns on transferring prisoners from one country's prison system to another within Europe.

 

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

At 1st September 2014 IDECOM project started. The project financed by Erasmus+ Romanian National Agency, is a strategic partnership of Timisoara Penitentiary (Romania) as the main applicant.

The IDECOM project aims at the development and implementation of new educational methods in the training of prison staff, focusing on transversal skills.

This project gathers Universities, training organizations, consultancies and prison services from Moldova, Portugal, Turkey and Romania, aiming to develop work-based joint curricula in a blended learning format using ICT and intensive short-term training courses on transversal skills ( innovation, entrepreneurship, communication, ICT and teamwork).

EuroPris is a partner in the project to support dissemination of results and organisation of international events.
 

Prisons of the Future

How does the prison of the future look like? And what alternatives to regular imprisonment exist? These are the main question in the EC funded project Prison of the Future. At 2 and 3 October 2014 the first working session of the project Prisons of the Future took place in The Hague with project partners from Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands.

The following general trends in prison and probation practice since 2000 were elaborated:

  • Increasing use of front door options to avoid imprisonment
  • Increasing use of back door options that shorten the time of imprisonment.
  • More focus on individualized trajectories to minimize negative effects of detention.
  • Professionalization of the prison and probation services. Read more.
Improving Conditions Related to Detention
The Role of the ECHR, the Strasbourg Court and National Courts
6-7 November 2014, Strasbourg

The first of three seminars in a series co-financed by the European Commission via its Criminal Justice funding programme, was held in Strasbourg on 6-7 November 2014 at the premises of the Council of Europe. It brought together 59 participants, primarily judges, prosecutors, lawyers and civil servants from ministries, as well as some from NPMs and prison administrations to look at, 'Improving Conditions Related to Detention: the role of the ECHR, the Strasbourg Court and national courts.

 

The first day looked at the European Convention on Human Rights on detention and the European Court of Human Rights' relevant jurisprudence, which were covered by Professor Dirk van Zyl Smit from the University of Nottingham and Judge Vincent De Gaetano from the European Court of Human Rights. Read more.
EUROPRIS EXPERT GROUPS
FD 909 Expert Group

The EuroPris expert group on the Framework Decision 909[1] (FD 909) - Transfer of prisoners met in Brussels on 23rd and 24th September 2014 to discuss matters relating to the effective transfer of prisoners under this FD. The group were hosted by EuroPris at their office in the headquarters of the Belgium Prison Service. This is the third meeting of this group in relation to the FD 909. The workshop was attended by representatives from seven Member States that had either already transposed this Framework Decision or were going through the process to complete its introduction into their law. The meeting was also attended by the policy lead from the European Commission. The aim of the workshop was to discuss the practicalities of using this Framework Decision and transferring prisoners from one jurisdiction to another. Topics under discussion included: the state of play with regards to the implementation of the FD by the Member States present and an update from across the European Union. 

The full report can be downloaded here

 

ICT Expert Group

The EuroPris ICT expert group will hold on 9-10th December in Luxembourg its third meeting. The agenda of the meeting will include topics such as evaluation and follow up of the ICT workshop

the possibility of creating essential platforms for prison services, discussion of the survey results on possible data model of exchange of prisoner related information within FD 909, exchange of the ICT projects taking place in Eurpean prison administrations. Another focus will be the preparation of the ICT workshop that is planned in the second half of 2015.The group is composed of experts from Sweden, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Romania, Norway, Croatia, Belgium, Luxembourg, England and Wales, Catalonia, Netherlands and Czech Republic. 

PRESSROOM

  

PRISON RELATED ARTICLES    
  • The Swedish Government has instructed the authorities in the judicial system to jointly develop methods for managing criminal cases, focusing on efficiency, quality and legal certainty [read more]
  • UK: How restorative justice is steering young offenders away from crime [read article]
  • UK: Most freed prisoners 'lacking home and job' [read article]
  • Study of prisoners in Sweden: People who have been in prison run a higher risk of committing suicide; 18 times that of the general population [read article]
  • CPT publishes report on Greece together with the response of the Greek authorities [read more]
  • CPT publishes report on Denmark [read more]
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PRISON CLOSURES: THINKING ABOUT HISTORY AND THE CHANGING PRISON ESTATE
November's feature article
 
November's feature article comes from Helen Johnston who is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Hull. 
 

This month's feature article is a pen portrait from Helen Johnston which was featured in the UK Prison Journal magazine. Prison closures in recent years attracted her attention. Some of these prisons are part of the collective architectural history as well as social and cultural history, in terms of the hundreds of people who have worked or lived in these institutions over the course of their history.

In this article Helen talks about prison building in the period of reform, Victorian prison design and new penal ideas of the twentieth century.  

 
To read the article please click here 
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. Report - EuroPris Expert Group Recommendations on Framework Decision 909; 
  6. Foreign Nationals Workshop Presentations
  7. PC-CP 4th Plenary Meeting 5-7 November, Strasbourg, Summary Report

FORTHCOMING EVENTS
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