By Lino Brosius
The past weeks the project team of CILC and NHC has worked on a video production for the National School of Judges of Ukraine – one of the training institutes for the Ukrainian judiciary. This video shows the trainees – Ukrainian candidate judges – how the public prosecution service, the probation service and the courts in the Netherlands work together, for example during pre-trial detention, the court hearing and afterwards. In this video, public prosecutor Justine Beumer, probation officer Michiel van Herpen and criminal judge Rutger Wery talk about their work, the importance of probation and mutual trust. This video was produced by CILC and Tasfilms.
In the first months of 2021 the project team and the involved Dutch and Ukrainian experts also provided legislative advice, conducted trainings of probation trainers, and further strengthened the communication strategy of the probation service in Ukraine.
Since 2017 The Netherlands supports Ukraine in making probation operational by strengthening the capacity of the probation service, promoting the use of alternatives to incarceration among legal professionals, and generating support for probation and alternative sanctions among citizens. In the framework of the Matra project Probation and alternative sanctions in Ukraine Dutch prosecutors, judges and probation officers teach their Ukrainian colleagues how to work with probation advisory reports. In peer meetings these professionals also discuss the use of community services and probation supervision.
This project is funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs through its Matra programme.
For more information about this project in Ukraine, please email CILC senior project manager Lino Brosius.