Register now for the upcoming European Prison Regime Forum webinar on 13 April via the online Zoom platform. During the half-day morning session, the value of sports will be a central topic and good practices will be presented on how sports initiatives and contacts with professional football and sports clubs have brought positive results for (ex) prisoners, increased their chances for a successful reintegration and a better employability.

For further information about the event, agenda and registration, please visit our website.

EuroPris, ICPA and CEP are jointly organising an online dialogue on "The Hidden Casualties of Covid? Understanding Prison Staff Well-Being in a Crisis". The event will take place on April 15 from 15:00-16:30 via the Zoom platform. This dialogue provides an opportunity for practitioners and the research community to (re)consider the position, needs, and role of prison staff at a time of unprecedented strain. Alison Liebling and Guillermo Sanhueza will moderate the dialogue with Prison Service leaders and experts from Portugal, Singapore, Sweden and Oregon

For the registration link and additional information about the event please visit our website. 

Registration is now open for the online Technology in Corrections conference organized jointly by EuroPris and ICPA. From 28-30 April, the conference will address three main topics: 1) Disrupted Communications; 2) Disrupted Man-Machine Relations; 3) Disrupted Management. Disruptive technology is an innovation that significantly alters the way that consumers, public service, or businesses operate. During the three half-days, it is possible to attend a variety of sessions across a wide range of topics concerning technology practices and experiences, with over 35 presentations and more than 70 speakers from around the world.

Further information about highlighted speakers and registration available on the website.

We are seeing that the numbers of covid-19 cases are on the decline and that we have very few incidents at the moment. We are constantly monitoring the situation on how it is evolving within the prisons and at our probation services but also in society in general. We try to be as flexible as possible, and gradually open up more depending on where in the country the prison is. However, we are also preparing and planning for new potential outbreaks as a precaution.

Although foreign national prisoners have equal rights on prison education, in practice, their educational needs are rarely met due to organizational barriers. Education behind foreign bars (Eabt, the Netherlands) offers a solution to this problem by providing distance education to their nationals detained abroad. The PArticipation and Learning in Detention (PALD) research group of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB – Belgium) set up an exploratory mixed-methods case study to gain insight into the work of Eabt. The study results can potentially inspire countries or organizations that would like to set up distance education for their nationals detained abroad.

Click here to view the graphs. 

Over the past two years, three Special Interest Groups (SIGs) developed training manuals based on European and international minimum standards. The topics of these training manuals are Leadership & Management, Dynamic security and Managing difficult inmates. Within each topic, best practices, a training handbook and a description of the minimum standards have been developed. All manuals are available in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. The reports are produced within an EU financed project that supports the European Penitentiary Training Academies network (EPTA) and will be published on the EPTA website in the course of this week.

The online seminar, organised by the HELP programme from CoE will take place on Tuesday 23 March. This seminar will offer justice professionals an opportunity to discuss recent developments and challenges to international cooperation during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a particular emphasis in the areas of counter-terrorism, organised crime and radicalisation.

In his new series, John Scott from the Criminal Justice Network talks to practitioners about the challenges of maintaining criminal justice services, and keeping people in prisons safe and Covid-19 free. Two interviews were held with practitioners Miikka Mölsä, Suomenlinna open prison in Finland and Katja Voh and Roman Orešnik from Maribor Prison, in Slovenia. Next time, there will be an interview from the Irish Prison Service, stay tuned!

Guidelines released by the Council of Europe in November 2019 recommend prison staff and probation practitioners receive basic training which raises awareness of the mental health needs of convicted persons. Recent data of a pan-EU survey from the Erasmus+ AWARE project explore the training needs of prison and probation staff to effectively support clients with mental health needs, and how institutions can support the wellbeing of their staff. A training manual and infographics have been published in German and English on the project website: www.aware-project.org.