Alternatives to detention in Europe: promising practices and tools, training package, Directorate General for Justice

Abstract

‘Alternatives to detention in Europe: promising practices and tools: a training package’ is the result of a 2-year work programme called, ‘Reducing Prison Population: advanced tools of justice in Europe’ JUST/2013/JPEN/AG/4489. This programme was launched in March 2014 and coordinated by the Italian “Community of Pope John XXIII” Association, and developed in 7 European countries (Italy, Bulgaria, France, Germany Latvia, Romania, Scotland: United Kingdom) with the financial support of the European Commission-Directorate General for Justice. The aim was to improve knowledge and to exchange ‘innovative measures of practices alternative to imprisonment, both in pre and post trial phase’. One specific objective was to construct a Training Package for ‘operators and professionals working in services that provided alternatives to detention’. In order to promote alternatives to detention across European Countries, the project investigated the use of, and applied specific evidence-based criteria, to examine the effectiveness of alternatives to imprisonment. Workstreams 1 and 2 of ‘Reducing the prison population: advanced tools of justice in Europe’, showed that good and promising practices existed within European Member States. Based upon this evidence, it was decided that a training package should focused upon pre and post-trial phases, should incorporate the good and promising practices, be available to all practitioners (such as police officers, prosecutors, judges, probation specialists, representatives from nongovernmental organisations and individuals working in criminal justice and penal reform) together with policy makers and finally, to be used, in addition, as an operational and/or reference tool. This training package, therefore, embodies and presents a diverse group of innovative and promising alternatives to detention developed by the partner countries. Additional information about ‘Reducing Prison Population: advanced tools of justice in Europe’, may be found at: www.reducingprison.eu