Edition 15: November 2015 - In This Issue:
EUROPRIS INTERVIEW
Nils Oberg
Director General of the Swedish Prison and Probation Service

EuroPris How many Prison establishments do you oversee? 
Nils Oberg I oversee approximately 30 remand prisons, 50 prisons and 35 probation offices across the country. The Swedish Prison and Probation Service also conduct around 80 000 client transports each year.

How many staff do you manage? 
11 000 employees with over 200 different job descriptions, for example prison officers, inspectors, transport staff, nurses, kitchen staff, cleaning staff and office workers.. . click here to read the interview.
EUROPRIS NEWS

Criminal Justice Platform Conference, Radicalisation and Violent Extremism - Disengagement, prevention, monitoring
Criminal Justice Platform Europe (CJPE) organised the one-day conference at the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialized Training in Barcelona on Wednesday, 14 October 2015. In the three plenary sessions experts, policy-makers and practitioners from different EU countries reflected on the concept of radicalisation, exchanged national policies implemented to prevent further radicalisation processes within prison settings or probation and shared successful programmes facilitating disengagement strategies for radicalised people. The participants and speakers had the chance to discuss some of the issues raised during the plenaries sessions in more detail in two parallel workshop sessions.  Participants and speakers engaged in very lively debates, sharing further details of experiences and practices in the different contexts. For more information, presentations, Summary report and photos of the conference  click here

High Level Ministerial Conference on Radicalisation
On 19 October 2015, the European Commission hosted a Ministerial Conference on the "Criminal justice response to radicalisation", in Brussels and brought together around 250 participants, including Ministers of Justice, legal practitioners, prison administrations, government officials, international organisations, academics and relevant civil society organisations, including representatives of EuroPris.
Preventing radicalisation leading to terrorism and developing effective disengagement and de-radicalisation programmes is a priority for the Commission. This was set out in the European Commission's "European Agenda for Security" of 28 April 2015 and in the Council in its Internal Security Strategy 2015-2020 adopted by Ministers on 16 June 2015. 
The Conference facilitated the exchange of views on effective interventions, management and sentencing practices to prevent the spread of radicalised ideas inside and outside prisons in the European Union, which could lead to acts of terrorism. The discussions contributeed to finding responses in the criminal justice sector on how to deal with this sensitive and complex problem.
The outcome of the Conference will be presented at the December Justice and Home Affairs Council by feeding in   to Council Conclusions.
Watch here  DG Justice Commissioner Věra JOUROVÁ Introduction and other videos from the conference.
For more info and photos of the conference, click here.

European Prison Education Association Conference
The European Prison Education Association held their 15th bi-annual conference in the beginning of October in Antwerp. Out of the many interesting presentations we would like to highlight a presentation by Alan Smith. Before his retirement in 2011, he was the coordinator of the EU Grundtvig Program for adult learning. During his period with Grundtvig, over a 100 European prison education projects and partnerships were supported, as well as innumerable training courses and other cross-border mobility activities for people active in the field. In his presentation he was outlining recent trends, emerging priorities and the close relationship between adult learning and prison education from a European perspective. For viewing his presentation click here.

International Conference of Youth Justice
The Ministry of Justice of Romania, through the National Administration of Penitentiaries, in collaboration with Meridians International, European organization committed with the youth, co-organised in Bucharest, the first International Conference of Youth Justice with the motto: "Let's walk, let's talk together". Through the title and the symbol associated with the conference, the two partners proposed themselves to send a message of profound significance and social convergence.
The first Conference has been a success in terms of attendance, with over 300 registered people and participants from the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Switzerland and Croatia. They discussed the problems that young offenders with judicial measures have to face in Europe. The Conference has been a meeting point to transfer knowledge and good practices, with the objective of building a common Europe in the legal and educational field and maintaining a social balance.
The agenda of the conference can be accessed here .
The conference has been live streamed and it can be watched following this link
Click here for more information and photos of the conference.  

European Penitentiary Training Academies Conference
EuroPris president Hans Meurisse participated from 4-6 November at the conference of the European Penitentiary Training Academies (EPTA) that took place in Rome under the Italian presidency. He gave a presentation about recent activities of EuroPris and discussed possible ways of cooperation between EPTA and EuroPris in order to establish links between staff training related activities of both networks. EuroPris also facilitated a presentation of prison officer Silvio Lass (Germany) on a practical examination that is exercised in Mecklenburg West Pomerania. During the presentation the short movie "The examination" was shown. The movie shows the practical examination, the preparation of the candidate, the work of the examination board and the final result s.

Workshop E-Learning for Staff Training
On 10/11 December the EuroPris/ CEP staff training workshop on "E-learning for staff - concepts, achievements, experiences" takes place in Dublin. The event is co-hosted by the Prison and Probation Services of Ireland. The aim of the workshop will be to learn from experiences of countries that already gathered much experience in working with e-learning as well as those who have only recently started or who are exploring the possibilities to introduce e-learning for their staff. The registration deadline is 1 December. For more information please click here


ICPA Annual Conference
Last month the International Corrections and Prisons Association held its Annual Conference in Melbourne, Australia. Over 600 participants took part making it one of their most successful events yet with some 150+ presentations under the banner of 'Managing Risk in Contemporary Prison Systems'. EuroPris was represented at the conference by 3 of its Board Members: Marianne Vollan, Karin Dotter-Schiller and Catalin Claudiu Bejan. The presentations of the conference can be found on ICPA website. 
Watch a video with impressions of the conference. 



Criminal Justice Platform International Seminar
Criminal Justice Platform will organise an International Seminar on the implementation of the Framework Decisions   2008/909/JHA, 2008/947/JHA and 2009/829/JHA on 3 December 2015 in Brussels, Belgium. 
CJP invites Members of European Parliament, European policy makers, representatives of the EU, Member States and Nongovernmental Organisations to receive an update on the implementation of the three Framework Decisions throughout Europe. The seminar will focus on:
  • status of implementation
  • actual use of the Framework Decisions
  • issues and concerns in the use of the Framework Decisions
  • future expectations

For more information, click here.

PROJECT NEWS
Prisons of the Future
On 19-20 November the final working session of this project will be organized by the Dutch Custodial Institutions Agency and take place in Zaandam, Netherlands with the partners from Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Belgium. The upcoming session will very much focus on innovative options that can change current prison and probation practice. Those innovations refer to interactions between persons inside and outside the prison, to prison architecture and to levels of normalization. The project will be closed with a final conference in The Hague on 2-4 March 2016. More information on the conference will be available in our January newsletter. Click here to read more

ECOPRIS

In the first months the project worked on the development of a comparative analysis for prison work models. This tool will give an overview of how prison work is organized in different countries and provides for some cases of success and failure. We would like to invite European Prison Administrations to support this tool (see example below) with your experiences by completing 
this template . Also, it would be helpful if you can provide EuroPris with contact details of an expert that can be approached for questions about prison work in your country.To read more on the project click here.

IDECOM Innovative staff training
The first multiplier event E1-National Seminar Romania "Prison Staff Training Needs" of the project "Innovation, Development and Communication for a better education in Prison System"  (IDECOM)  took place in 29-th October 2015 in Timișoara Prison.
The purpose of the event was to promote the project and engage key stakeholders and experts. Besides presenting the project background, objectives and timeline, the focus was on presentation of the first intellectual output that was developed"STAFF TRAINING NEEDS ANALYSIS". This study is a document comparing prison staff self assessment on the competences addressed by the project: innovation, entrepreneurship, communication, teamwork and ICT. To read more click here

STEPS2 Resettlement
The STEPS2 Resettlement project will come to an end in February 2016 so to be able to properly diseminate the findings from this project and some useful tools to help with the use of and implementation of Framework Decision 909 a conference will be held in Bucharest, Romania on Thursday 4th and Friday 5th February 2016.
If you would be interested in attending this conference there are limited places and will be awarded to representation of member states first and then on a first come first served basis. All travel, accommodation and food is booked and paid for by the project. To register your interest please send an email entitled: 'STEPS2 Conference Registration of Interest' to  kim.lau@noms.gsi.gov.uk  stating your full name, title, job title, organisation, country and email address. To find out more information click here. 

Foriner
This EU funded project is designed to meet the educational needs of foreign national prisoners in Europe. This innovative project, led by VOCVO a Flemish support centre for adult education based in Belgium, seeks to address the educational requirements of FNPs in European prisons who's access to educational programmes is limited due to language issues.  The FORINER Project  partners will design and pilot creative, ICT-driven solutions, to improve educational outcomes for foreign national prisoners in Europe. Project partners are Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, Education Behind Prison  Bars, The Netherlands, and MegaNexus, UK. The Project is funded through the EC Erasmus+ Programme and runs from 1st January 2016 to 31 December 2017. EuroPris is an associated partner and will establish links between the project and our work with Foreign Nationals in Prison. For further information click or contact the project manager Inge van Acker inge. van.acker@vocvo.be . To find out more about the project click here. 

R2PRIS Radicalisation Prevention in Prison
This project is an initiative of the university of Beira (Portugal), bringing together prison services of Turkey, Norway, Belgium and Romania, IPS, the University of Timisoara (Romania) and ICPA. EuroPris joined for linking the project to other European initiatives in the field of radicalisation and our expert group on that topic. On 3 & 4 November the kick off meeting of the project took place at Beira university with a presentation of the project and the partners agreeing on concrete steps for their 3-year cooperation in the project. Developing awareness about radicalisation (terminology, pathways, levels, recruitment, identification, indicators), supporting staff in detecting signs of radicalisation and the development of training programs for prison staff on how to respond and manage radicalized offenders are the main aims of the project. Further information about the project will be published on the EuroPris website.

Improving Conditions Related to Detention
The final seminar of three in the project series on a more comprehensive & coherent approach in understanding and improving conditions related to detention took place at ERA's conference centre in Trier on 15-16 October 2015, entitled: 'Improving Measures Related to Detention Conditions at EU Level: Best Practice, Legislation and the European Commission's Green Paper'. As the title of the suggests, the main focus was on the still ongoing debate and developments surrounding the EU's Green Paper on the application of EU criminal justice legislation in the field of detention, but also effective national supervision of detention conditions and good practices in prison management. EuroPris supported this event with speakers on healthcare services (Germany) and psychological wellbeing of prisoners (Finland). To find out more click here
EUROPRIS EXPERT GROUPS
 
Framework Decision 2008/909/JHA Transfer of Prisoners  
In September 2015, EuroPris hosted the second of the 2015 expert working groups on EC Framework Decision 2008/909/JHA. The first meeting was held on 6/7 July in Brussels and was attended by representatives from 13 countries. This second meeting took place in The Hague and was attended by participants from a further 11 countries. At the end of September 2015, 25 Member States had implemented the Framework Decision 909.  EuroPris invited experts from countries that are members of EuroPris , as well as non-member countries so to broaden the discussion between Member States. This enabled experts from countries who have recently implemented, the opportunity to meet and discuss prisoner transfers with their counterparts who have experience of using the Framework Decision - some of whom had attended previous working groups. With agreement from the experts, EuroPris are going to collate statistics on the use of the Framework Decision and numbers of EU national prisoners held in each Member State. This is the first time this information will be centrally gathered and will be useful for facilitating further discussions on the process and identifying working relationships between the Member States who have high proportions of foreign national prisoners. To find out more click here  

Real Estate/Logistics
The first Meeting of the EuroPris Real Estate/Logistics Expert Group took place on 5 & 6 November 2015 in Lisbon, Portugal. The group was comprised of representatives from 11 European National Agencies (Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal, England, Czech Republic, Finland, Lithuania, Northern Ireland, Slovenia and Turkey). During the meeting, the experts shared details on their current work, significant projects in which they are engaged and challenges that they face, explored the topic of Public Private Partnership and prison architecture and decided on the next steps of the Expert Group. 

Radicalisation and ICT in Prisons Expert Groups
This year two more EuroPris expert meetings will take place - one for the newly established group on Radicalisation and one on ICT with a newly composed group.
On 24 and 25 November 2015, the first EuroPris Radicalisation Expert Group will be held in Vienna, hosted by the Austrian Prison Service. 
On 15 and 16 December 2015, the EuroPris ICT in Prisons Expert group will meet for the fourth time in Malmo, hosted by the Swedish Prison and Probation Service. 
Notes and findings of both meetings will be published on our website and in the next newsletter.  
PRESSROOM    
PRISON RELATED ARTICLES
  • The Norden - Nordic Prisons. Retired Superintendent from Attica Correctional Facility in New York, visits four Nordic Prisons [watch video]
  • National Offender Management Service workforce statistics: September 2015 [read statistics] 
  • In detail: Scotland's prison population [read article] 
  • Polish orchestra plays to prisoners [read article] 
  • Incarceration artwork goes on display in Edinburgh [read article]
  • Restorative justice: 'How I got an apology from my abuser' [read article]
  • Prisoners probed 440 times for using Facebook in Scotland's jails [read article]
  • Britain's most dangerous prisoners to get meditation lessons [read article]
  • Fit for Release: How sports-based learning can help prisoners engage in education, gain employment and desist from crime   [read report]
  • Government research finds prisoners aspiring to education re-offend less on release [read article]
  • Finnish prisons go online [read article]
  • Scotland: What Works to Reduce Reoffending: A Summary of the Evidence [read article]
     
The Prison project: A longitudinal study on the effects of imprisonment in the Netherlands
November feature article
by 
Anja J.E. Dirkzwager, Paul Nieuwbeerta & Peter H. van der Laan 

T he Prison Project - a nationwide and longitudinal research project - was established to increase our knowledge on the intended and unintended consequences of imprisonment on the further life course of offenders and their families. A representative group of adult male prisoners who were put in pre-trial detention was followed for a number of years, and questioned repeatedly regarding their lives both during imprisonment and after their release from prison. A team of multi-disciplinary scholars from different organizations has joint efforts and resources, and developed the Prison Project. Anja Dirkzwager (Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement) and Paul Nieuwbeerta (Leiden University) were principal investigators and initiated and established the project. (accessed March 2015)

To read the full article, click here.
DOCUMENT LIBRARY
  1. Updated State of Play: EU Framework Decisions 909;  947829;
  2. Competent Authorities 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. Draft Agenda CJP International Seminar on the Implementation of the Framework Decisions;
  6. Agenda Workshop E-Learning for Staff Training;
  7. Presentations CJP Conference Radicalisation and Violent Extremism - Disengagement, prevention, monitoring;
  8. Summary Report and Notes CJP Conference Radicalisation and Violent Extremism - Disengagement, prevention, monitoring;
  9. Council of Europe Draft Guidelines for Prison and Probation Services Regarding Radicalisation and Violent Extremism;
  10. United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Mandela Rules) Draft;
  11. UNODC Handbook on prisoners with special needs.

FORTHCOMING EVENTS
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GET INVOLVED WITH EUROPRIS

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CONTACT US

EuroPris
P.O. Box 13635
2501 EP The Hague
Netherlands
+31-6-2505-5692
Office Manager
Website: www.europris.org

Contact EuroPris