"Peer Pro-social Modelling in Probation (PPROMPT) project aimed to structure a peer pro-social modelling, through the development and implementation in probation systems enhancing both the competencies of management and probation experts to address offenders’ needs. Project targeted to explore and implement an approach that builds social capital and resilience within people that are under probational measures. The need for more innovation and effectiveness in working with offenders,the great potential of peer education and The EU recommendations around the peer education were the reasons behind implementing this project.Specific goals included:1. To develop andragogical materials (manuals and programme contents) that support training for both staff and management in the field of peer training and pro-social model interventions;2. To develop and pilot a ""train the trainer"" course for probation workers in each country, giving them the ability to train, continuously, selected well- behaved offenders on peer training and pro-social modelling;3. To train the selected pool of inmates in each country on pro-social modeling and peer training, under the supervision of the probation trainers4. To analyse the pilot sessions and revise the manuals accordingly before disseminating the programme. The Project covered building up a Peer Pro-Social Model Team, trained by the Probation staff - professionals of this field. The selected well-behaving offenders were trained on newly prepared Pro-Social Model Programme and were expected to work as peer trainers for the others. The project needed to be a multicultural one since;*Special attention should have been paid to the selection of peer volunteers, to ensure that they are appropriate for the role, have the right motivation to complete the training. *The topic had to be handled by a consortium, composed of different cultures, experience and practices. *The probation staff needed to be well-trained both on the techniques and the possible problems that may arise during implementation phase which needs a full co-operation. *Training probation staff supported the system's sustainability in all partner countries, where released offenders can be replaced by the new offenders trained by the probation staff. The outputs of the project are;*A need assesment survey on the present probation groupwork and semminar activities was done;*A report on literature review and analysis of best practices on peer training was prepared;*A report on meta-analysis of pro social modelling practices was developed;*A curriculum on peer pro-social modelling in probation systems was structured;*A manual on peer training was prepared;* PPROMPT Life Skills Training Programme was prepared (It is a cognitive behavoural program focusing on the most important criminogenic needs like criminal attitudes, decision making, offending behaviour, planning for the future, family life, leisure time. The programme is interactive, structured and gives answers to the needs of the probationers);*Train the trainer course material for probation experts was prepared;*22 probation experts coming from partner countries attended a 5 day ""training of the trainers programme"".*Train the trainer course for the offenders were held in 3 different countries;*In the piloting phase trained offenders in different countries delivered the newly prepared programme to other offenders under the supervision.*Under the dissemination activities, 3 national semminars were organized in Turkey, Romania and Portugal.*Total number of adults who have benefited from the project added up to approximately 1000 persons.As a result of the PPROMPT Project:*A Peer Pro-Social Model system was structured for the Probation System.*The efficiancy of the groupworks and semminar programmes were increased.*The capabilities of the staff working for the Probation System were improved.*New methods on the rehabilitation and the reintegration of the offenders were structured and tried within the system. *The service quality in the Probation System of the partner countries was increased.The following actions to be taken in future will be adjusting the program in the light of the lived experience and evaluations , expanding the program to other probation services and other correctional settings and distributing the program to other probation services across Europe."

"As discussed by Hewson and colleagues (2020), COVID-19 outbreak in prison setting mirrored wider society. Measures to avoid spreading the virus included the temporary suspension of all family visits and activities with outside persons, such as sport, professional or vocational training (E-European Justice, 2020). Many recreational and occupational prison activities were cancelled, jury trials suspended, and court hearings delayed (Hewson et al., 2020). Once possibilities to substitute activities are scarce in prisons, where access to equipment and the internet are restricted, the time spent in cells increased (up to 23 h per day in some countries) (Kelly et al. 2020). As such, the pressing need to maintain a close to normal functioning has also shed a light on the potential advantages of previously cast aside options, namely technology-based strategies. The COVID-19 pandemic appears to mark a far-reaching turning point for the relationship between prison administrations and technology, while offering a glimpse at a future configuration of prison management services, focused on the individual, by way of technological solutions. In fact, by privileging digital strategies to mitigate the direct negative effects of the pandemic, prison administrations would also be addressing deeply embedded issues which marked the pre-pandemic era, and which will certainly continue to be consequent in the future, such as inmate education and social inclusion. The proposal is closely linked to the idea that the digitalisation momentum derived from the pandemic crisis must not be ignored but instead supported – especially in what concerns inmate education, employability and contact with the outside world. This long-overdue shift creates an opportunity to institute new strategies in prison management and, more than ever, the prison staff’s own ability to handle digital tools and assist prisoners with digital services was needed, revealing the urgent need to invest in the prison staff’s capacity to use digital services. Considering prison staff's (educational/training staff, technicians and prison officers) intermediary role between inmates and technological solutions which exponentially decrease recidivism rates, DIGICOR seeks to invest in providing training to this target group, enhancing their digital skills, and successfully harnessing technology towards inmate rehabilitation. The DIGICOR initiative seeks to support the implementation of innovative solutions, through a capacity-building intervention with prison staff, in turn affecting inmates, and thus facilitating the acquisition of digital literacy skills for one of the most socially and digitally excluded groups, the inmates.Approximately 600 stakeholders will be engaged in the project's activities. In order to fully understand the context-specific needs of the partner countries stakeholders, and building on preliminary research, the Consortium will engage in needs analysis and desk research activities (A2), which will ultimately lead to the production of IO1 State of the art analysis. These efforts will be complemented by the launch of A3, specifically in what concerns the production of the ""prison digitalisation scenarios"", and associated online repository for prison technologies (IO2). The Consortium will then invest in the development of the prison staff digital competences profile, and associated work-based programme, which will be easily transposed into DIGICOR's training provision initiatives: Training provision for the digital transition for prison staff, towards reduced recidivism (IO4, in the form of a b-learning training course) and Train-the-trainer programme for digital readiness (IO5, in the form of an e-learning training course). Both training courses will be operationalised and piloted, as well as the prison digitalisation scenarios, under A5 and A6, respectively. Lastly, DIGICOR will produce a set of policy recommendations, providing guidelines for the digital transition in penitentiary settings, with the aim of favouring inmate reduced recidivism. General project management activities (A1) will be carried out for the entire lifespan of the project, as well as any tasks connected to evaluation and active monitoring (A6), and dissemination and mainstreaming (A7).The Consortium also intends for the project to achieve a ripple effect in what concerns the updating of the training provision in regard to digital skillls for prison staff at a European level. As such, all intellectual outputs will be constructed bearing in mind the need for replicability and adaptability, as they will be made available to all interested entities. Through its dissemination strategy and multiplier events, the Consortium will also seek to influence the agendas of European policy- and decision-makers, so that it is possible to address the broader European relevance of the issues, actions and outputs of the project, looking beyond the project’s confines."

Every year a number of approx. 30,000 car accidents are taking place in the EU taking the life or severely injuring thousands of citizens. To counteract this phenomenon, European Commission has adopted a document called Policy Orientations 2011-2020 setting itself a target of reducing the number of road deaths by half. The same objective was adopted by the UN to reduce by half the number of deaths by 2030 at the international level. In the same time, the project contributes to other transversal priorities, such as reducing poverty. As we know reducing re-offending could contribute to reducing in poverty among the offenders. One of the main reasons behind the car accidents are: driving without licence, driving under the influence of alcohol and overspending (or dangerous driving). To combat these offences, member states have adopted severe legislation that send offenders with this sort of behaviour under probation supervision or in prisons. In Romania, the proportion of road offenders out of the total number of probationers is 47% in 2018 (NAP, Annual Report 2018). In spite of this huge number of offenders with this kind of offending history, there is no correctional program available that is up to date and evidence based or offender informed at the European level. This is the aim of this project: to take an existing program in Portugal (STOP Responsibility and Safety) and up-date it in line with the research evidence and offender expectations. In order to achieve this aim, the project team will:- undertake a thorough literature review and collection of good practices, - will design a new program - Bringing Safety on the roads - BriSaR. - will pilot it and evaluate it for its impact - will provide training of trainers in three jurisdictions - will manualize both the program and the evaluation tool. The innovative side of the program is that it will take an existing program in Portugal and will up-date it using the research evidence, examples of good practice and the opinion of offenders with road offences history. Another innovation of this project is that it will incorporate the evaluation into the program so the program leaders will be able to collect feedback on their performance as they run the program. It is expected that a number of at least 30 professionals and volunteers and 45 offenders will benefit directly from the program. In the same time, we expect that indirectly a significant number of offenders will benefit from the program once it is developed and tested. Only in Romanian, a number of Aproximar. 47,000 offenders under probation supervision could benefit from this program. By reducing the re-offending among this group of offenders, we expect that the program will contribute to the reduction of car accidents and indirectly to the decrease in the number of deaths on the road, which is the European Commission long term target.

The lockdowns measures to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 have unprecedented social & economic impacts on people's lives, affecting hardest those at the bottom of the income such as ex-prisoners. It is well known that most of the prisoners have low literacy and that upon release they face difficulties such as finding a steady job, that is a key dimension to stop re-offending. In fact, changes in economic factors can be associated with changes in crime, leading to identifiable crime ‘peaks’ during the time of crisis.Self-DESIGN is a proposal focused on assisting prisoners’ early self-reflection and preparation for release, giving them the necessary tools to gain self-awareness of their current strengths and needs at different levels. The project proposes to use design thinking processes to generate prisoner's self-awareness, empathy, creativity on mapping he/she future pathways, and doing so ability them to lead a law-abiding and self-support life.The project has two main goals, namely (1) to develop an innovative methodology that being creative, active, experiential and productive, enhances prisoners’ self-awareness of their individual’s unique re-entry needs and mapping existing resources to develop core competences for re-entry; (2) to enhance the job performance of justice practitioners that work in prison contexts, empowering them with new tools, templates and digital possibilities, increasing the level of resources available to invest in prisoners’ rehabilitation and social reintegration. A set of objectives was defined to achieve the goals: Obj1: By Sept 2021, to develop a reference framework of competencies for re-entry that includes the new re-entry barriers created by the COVID-19 pandemic, consulting at least 30 ex-prisoners, 75 prisoners and 50 justice practitioners.Obj2: By March 2022, to develop an innovative methodology for developing prisoners’ self-awareness, critical thinking and creativity on their re-entry process that focuses on using design thinking tools and templates to map, plan, monitor, evaluate and optimize the prisoners’ first paths upon release. Obj3: By Sept 2022, to deliver 5 pilots involving at least 100 prisoners, increasing prisoners’ levels of self-awareness, creativity, and motivation towards their reintegration process by 80%.Obj4: By Oct, 2022, to make available a mobile platform that supports the sustainability of the project, namely that helps professionals to replicate the methodology, to be validated through 5 workshops, involving more than 90 professionals working in the CJS. Obj5: By January 2023, to increase the number of professionals that use design thinking processes to enhance prisoners’ self-awareness and creativity on their reintegration process, downloading on average 120 times the mobile platform. Obj6: During 2-year long, under a strategic partnership, bring together interdisciplinarity and crosstalks between European justice practitioners, discussing the challenges raised by the COVID-19 pandemic on prisoners’ reintegration processes, organising in total 10 validation workshops and 6 multiplier events, directly involving at least 337 justice practitioners across Europe.During the Self-DESIGN lifetime, 3 Intellectual Outputs will be developed: ‘Reference framework of competencies for prisoners' re-entry aligned with the interviews’ results and including the new barriers created by the COVID-19 pandemic‘Design Thinking for Prisoners’ Reintegration – including the Methodology & a toolbox of design thinking templates targeting the individuals’ unique re-entry needs’‘Self-DESIGN mobile platform’During and upon its implementation we expect to have a positive impact on promoting prisoners’ self-awareness of their current and future individual skill needs upon release. Using a creative methodology, the project will increase prisoners’ human and social capital, namely their capacity to solve complex problems that configure their trajectories when they return to society (e.g. restructuring family ties, finding a house and/ or employment, health issues, others). Moreover, it will impact the justice practitioners, equipping them with alternative styles of teaching that use both innovative pedagogical concepts and a learner-centred approach and, therefore, are more attractive, engaging and relevant to the prisoner. It will also strengthen justice practitioners' knowledge, competencies, and experience in design thinking processes and how to use these principles to develop prisoners’ competencies for re-entry.By creating experiences and offering new knowledge, methodologies, templates and digital means that can be used when applying the prison treatment programmes, we expect an increment on both quality and results of rehabilitation programmes and staff’s job performance, motivation and satisfaction. In a long-term period, the aim is to reduce prisoners’ probability of re-offending, by increasing their probability of social inclusion upon release

"The MOBi project is a partnership of eight organizations present in five different EU countries. The project is led by CENTRUL PENTRU PROMOVAREA INVATARII PERMANENTE-CPIP and aimed to:•Understand the European contemporary punishment and reintegration picture in terms of society's perception, participation, offenders labelling, return to work or to community, building an assessment tool to measure society ‘culture’ towards punishment and reintegration•To create new, innovative and multidisciplinary approaches to respond to (ex)offenders’ reintegration process•To develop a community engagement methodology to support Criminal Justice System (CJS) organisations, practitioners, and closest stakeholders’ efforts on reinforcing existent community (society) based approaches•To design one transnational training programme, to be executed by key-organisations, aimed at civil society, to ensure that all citizens have access to knowledge of the rehabilitation model at work in their own criminal justice system, and are therefore able to review their own, individual role in the reintegration process•To deliver a Handbook, to support different organisations from Public, Private and Third Sector developing their social responsibility and participation on CJS and offender’s reintegration.The eight organizations partners are Genepi (France), Bremen Senate of Justice and Constitution and Hoppenbank e.V. (Germany), Associazione Antigone (Italy), Direção-Geral de Reinserção e Serviços Prisionais and Aproximar, Cooperativa de Solidariedade Social (Portugal), Center for Promoting Lifelong Learning - CPIP and The Baia Mare Penitentiary (Romania). During the project partners have been developing a set of Intellectual Outputs (IO), namely: IO1: Assessment Tool to screen society’s perceptions on (ex) offenders needs and CJS functionIO2: Assessment Tool to screen offender’s perceptions on society acceptance regarding reintegration processIO3: Methodology on Community engagement in CJSIO4: Training course on community awareness on CJS, (ex)offenders’ rehabilitation & reintegration processesO5: Handbook on community awareness of (ex)offenders’ rehabilitation & reintegration processes. The MOBI process and way of work was to ensure that this package of assessment, methodology and training can and will be replicated in any European Union country with the intended purpose of up-scaling to public policy recommendation and raising awareness of (ex)offenders’ rehabilitation and reintegration processes. It’s destined to civil society organizations in general in order to put their values on action to enhance (ex)offenders’ reintegration process.One of the expected results MOBI has attained is a civil society more informed about prison services operation, different offender populations and strategies to actively participate on offenders’ social reintegration, with special focus on employment issues. Thus, our MOBI results were used by workers and trainers linked to Prison Services who intend to developed key-competences to transmit how the services work, who are the clients, what are their needs, etc. as well as by organizations from Public, Private and Third Sector developing their social responsibility and participation on Criminal Justice System and offender’s reintegration. In this sense, MOBi project was conceived to respond to an evolving need, namely the social inclusion of (ex) offenders and the creation of a collaborative context whereas both prison and community engage into a ""co-working"" mindset focus on making reintegration a lifelong learning process for both offenders and civil society. The project proposes an innovative integrated approach in order to diminish the distance existing between society, in general, and the Criminal Justice System by using the tools of adult education."