Between 9-10 June experts in the Moldovan probation and penitentiary systems met for a round table on joint efforts for the social reintegration of detainees. This event marked the latest activity in improving the connection between intramural and extramural care in the EU-funded project Support to the enforcement, probation and rehabilitation systems in Moldova. This project that links up Moldovan enforcement, probation and detention professionals with their peers from abroad is implemented by CILC together with its partner organisations PRI, GIZ, NHC and IRP.
The two-day meeting, opened by the Moldovan Minister of Justice, focused on conditional release of detainees and explored effective ways and tools for the inter-institutional cooperation between probation and penitentiary systems. Probation and detention system professionals, judges, prosecutors, civil society representatives, and experts from Georgia, Latvia and Romania discussed the current situation in Moldova and the shortcomings of the rehabilitation process of former detainees. The conclusions and proposals made by participants at the end of the round table were presented to the Ministry of Justice, which confirmed its willingness to support them.
These proposals include:
- the development of functional mechanisms for the cooperation between the National Probation Inspectorate and the Penitentiary Department in order to sustain a reintegration process of detainees which is objective, transparent, and fair;
- the development of functional mechanisms for the cooperation between the National Probation Inspectorate and the Penitentiary Department in order to sustain a reintegration process of detainees which is objective, transparent, and fair;
- common training programmes for staff of both systems;
- a more sustained cooperation with civil society;
- the establishment of a working group under the coordination of the Ministry of Justice to revise the legal framework related to resocialisation activities;
- the improvement of the remuneration of staff, taking into account their important role in the criminal justice system.
For Romanian language news items on this round table by the Moldovan Ministry of Justice, please follow these links: round table day one, round table day two.
CILC and its partner organisations are implementing the project Support to the enforcement, probation and rehabilitation systems in Moldova since October 2014. The current implementation period until end October 2016 includes activities on designing individual treatment plans for inmates in all the penitentiaries in Moldova, developing a procedures manual at the Penitentiary Department, and a review of the pre-trial advisory reports ofthe Moldovan National Probation Inspectorate, aimed at increasing their quality and thus the credibility and usefulness of probation in the justice chain.
The most visible activity in the penitentiary sector this fall, will be a project of the NGO Art Coliseum. This organisation will stage Hamlet with detainees of the Rezina penitentiary, one of the most severe detention facilities in Moldova. Together with the Moldovan Ministry of Justice, NORLAM and other donors, our project contributes to this event by providing the equipment for the artistic team, organising the media campaign, and handling the PR and the professional photography services, which will culminate in a photo exhibition scheduled for later this year.
The project of Art Coliseum to stage Hamlet with detainees of the Rezina penitentiary provides an excellent and quite unique opportunity to contribute to improving the public perception of the system of serving sentences in Moldova, and to support correcting the internal perception among employees of the penitentiary system about detainees. Our project aims at improving the relationship between detainees and Penitentiary Department employees. The joint involvement of the two groups in an activity so unusual for a penitentiary (staging a theatre show) will help correcting the psychological relationships between them. Moreover, this activity will allow the public at large to look beyond the stigma of the ‘convict’.
The project Support to the enforcement, probation and rehabilitation systems in Moldova is financed by the Delegation of the European Union to the Republic of Moldova.