November EuroPris Newsletter 2017

Newsletter

November 2017

EuroPris Interview

Major General, Dr. Tamás Toth, Hungarian Prison Service

EuroPris : What is your opinion on the role of women in the European correctional field?

Tamás Toth : There is little talk about women working in the correctional field, although they do an excellent job in the prisons. Every third employee at the Hungarian Prison Service is female, which means more than 3 000 people, precisely 3 173 people, based on today’s data, out of 9 000.

Our female colleagues engage themselves in every field of the professional work at the Hungarian Prison Service, at the same time they excel in reintegration officer positions. Ladies usually have an extraordinary empathic skill and they are also good at communication. This is especially true in case of our colleagues who prove their abilities on a daily basis.

Featured Article – Good reasons for treating ADHD in prison

Lena Lundholm , PhD and clinical psychologist, has over the past ten years been involved in research and development concerning ADHD, substance abuse and the relation to crime. She is now Section Manager in the Swedish Prison and Probation Service and will be one of the speakers at the EuroPris and CEP workshop on Mental Health in Prison and Probation in December.

In this issue she describes Swedish frontline experience and international research evidence of assessing and treating ADHD in prison. ADHD seem to be one of the drivers behind anti-social behaviour, particularly for violent behaviour and drug abuse.

Read article here

EuroPris News

2 ^nd International Correctional Research Symposium

After the first successful edition of the Correctional Research Symposium earlier this year, EuroPris and ICPA in collaboration with the Czech Prison Service have decided to organize a second edition in Prague on 9 ^th and 10 ^th of May 2018.

Family relations workshop - Call for proposals for presentations

After two years of fruitful exchange and the publication of a comprehensive Good Practice Collection , the EuroPris Family relations expert group will come to a closing with a workshop on 11 & 12 April 2018 in Vienna . The experts of our group have interesting developments to share. But we also know that many more good practices exist in other European countries, that were not involved in the group and we would like to invite you to present them at our workshop. Please send your proposals for presentations to kirstenhawlitschek@europris.org.

Mental health – workshop in Dublin

EuroPris and Confederation of European Probation (CEP) will organise a 1,5 day workshop on the 6th and 7th of December on Mental Health issues in Prison and Probation. The workshop is kindly hosted by the Irish Probation Service in Dublin.

Radicalisation workshop – Call for proposals for presentations

Building on the valuable exchange at the ‘closed door’ workshop (for prison experts only) on the issue of violent extremism and radicalisation, EuroPris is organizing the next workshop in February 2018 in Brussels, Belgium . This workshop will be linked to a European Commission event with a similar focus. EuroPris plans to discuss latest developments in relation to dispersement or separation of radicalized prisoners; reintegration challenges for foreign fighters/returnees; and multi-agency cooperation and sharing of data. If you would like to contribute to the workshop please mail kirstenhawlitschek@europris.org

Vocational training in focus at the European Prison Regime Forum

EuroPris is organising a workshop together with the Italian Department of Penitentiary Administration on 21-24 November in Rome, Italy. This year the European Prison Regime Forum will focus on Vocational training and Reintegration . Prison Services can present and discuss their best practices in this field. The Forum will also include moderated discussions about prison work – who is in charge? How relevant is the type of work for the prisoner? Earning model for prisons or prisoners?

Workshop report about Risk and Needs Assessment

On the 12-13 October EuroPris held a workshop in Brussels on an issue that is a challenge for most correctional agencies, risk and needs assessment. Experts and researchers met and learned more about the latest evidence in the field. Ethical issues were addressed, as well as specific risk assessments for women, sexual offenders and violent extremist offenders.

Read the report

EuroPris resources highlighted in COPE journal

One purpose of EuroPris is to enhance transparency and to facilitate the sharing of information among its members. European Prison Information System (EPIS) is a database for providing European prison data for European prison agencies. Under the EPIS umbrella there are sub-components such as KMS, the Knowledge Management System, which provide the opportunity to request and gather information on specific topics relevant to prison services. In the last issue of European Journal of Parental Imprisonment EuroPris co-workers Fraser Bryans and Vikki Elliott describe the potential of EPIS and KMS for different purposes.

Read the report

Other News

European Penitentiary Training Academies

This year the Annual Conference of the European Penitentiary Training Network (EPTA) took place in Switzerland , from 19th to 22th September 2017 . The meeting, organized by the Swiss Prison Staff Training Centre, gathered 48 participants and representatives from 20 European Penitentiary Academies.

Expanding the restorative imagination

In June 2018 the European Forum for Restorative Justice arranges the 10 ^th International EFRJ Conference in Tirana, Albania . EFRJ welcomes practice oriented presentations and training sessions. Deadline for submitting papers is on 7 January 2018 .

For more information, click here: www.euforumrj.org/events/efrj-conference-2018/

Unique mix of inmates, prison staff and professional soccer players in international tournament

On 22 September 2017 , the Norwegian prison Norgerhaven in the Netherlands hosted an international football tournament. The event was a great success and 12 teams consisted of (ex-) detainees, staff, homeless people and even a few famous former professional football players. The Netherlands, Norway, Germany and Ireland were represented and the purpose of the tournament was to fraternize, activate and connect people in an extra-ordinary event.

Transition management in Swiss online dossier

The Swiss Prison Staff Training Centre has created a thematic dossier about transition management. It contains both research evidence and practical examples from around Europe. It is available in three languages (German, French and English):

English

German

French

European Prison Education Association

This week EPEA will have the Training Conference in Vienna on 16-19 November . Unfortunately all prison visits are already fully booked, but registration for the conference is still possible:

https://shop.ocg.at/en/events/epea2017.html

Apart from a variety of workshops and presentations the General Council is also to be held during the conference. Members are invited to prepare for and participate in this important meeting.

More information is to be found at: http://www.epea.org/

EuroPris Expert Groups

Real Estate and Logistics

A new expert group on Real Estate & Logistics has started its work in September this year with a meeting in Ghent, Belgium . The participating experts are from Northern Ireland, Finland, Belgium, Slovenia, Turkey, England, Sweden, Netherlands and Norway. The group discussed issues like sustainable prison design, the well-being prison and the use of IP solutions in operational prisons. View presentations here.

The experts decided to work on two reports in the coming year: design of prisons for women and a review of academic literature / evidence based design. One additional expert could still join the group – any interest can be expressed until 31 December to kirstenhawlitschek@europris.org

Project News

R2PRIS - training modules under development

Entering in its last year of implementation, the R2PRIS – Radicalisation Prevention in Prisons project is reaching some important milestones. Having started with a solid literature review, the project is now finishing a screening tool set that will help prison staff of different levels to detect vulnerable and radicalised inmates. As part of the project’s goals prison staff participated in the first joint staff short-term training in Lisbon during the last week of September, followed by a similar session for Dutch speaking Belgian staff in Brussels in October.

The next session is planned for French speaking participants in Belgium on December 7 ^th .

FORINER - Final Conference 2017

In December 2017 , the FORINER project will come to an end. To ensure that important steps are taken to provide more and better distance education to foreign national prisoners in Europe, on 28 November 2017 , in Brussels, the FORINER team will share the project results with partners, stakeholders, policy makers and practitioners. It will be a proud moment to share the culmination of all the hard work that has gone into the project over the last 24 months.

MenACE – 2 ^nd project meeting

Mental Health, Aging and Palliative Care in Prisons (MenACE) held its second project meeting on 21-22 September in Lisbon, Portugal . In order to have more information included in the first report, an overview of the project's three main topics – State of the Art and Best Practices Review – the partnership decided to collect more data about staff training/prevention programs already developed/implemented in partner countries.