"The EU Directive 2012/29 states this principle ""a crime is not only a wrong to society, but also a violation of the individual rights of victims"". Restorative justice starts from the assumption that the crime generates a conflict that causes the breaking of symbolically shared social expectations. The crime becomes an offense that does not only affect those who committed it and those who sanction it with the sentence, but who has suffered the wrong and the laceration: the victim and society. The implementation of restorative justice (when possible) has several benefits in term of reduction of crime recurrence, reduction of post-traumatic stress symptoms and drop of the victim's desire for revenge against the offender. However, according a recent Report commissioned by the European Commission on the implementation status of the Directive EU, restorative justice doesn’t represent yet a founding concept of the justice system since different Member States do not have same approach in its introduction into their own legal systems. Thus, the Report asks to increase cooperation among justice practitioners (bottom-up approach) not only to better share tools, methodologies, good practices, etc. but also to joint search for effective solutions to common problems in Europe (e.g. secondary victimization of the victim).The general objective of PROTECT is to promote the victims’ rights protection (i.e. fostering victims’ social inclusion) through the implementation of restorative practices paths. In doing this, the project intends to improve the skills and competences of the trainers/operators of partners’ organizations working in the field of the restorative justice and of the support to the victims of crime. The objective will be pursued through the creation of a ""peer-learning community"", among some of the EU countries having effectively implemented the Directive, where partners can actively exchange knowledge, develop common training methodologies, foster professional competences and discuss problematic issues.To achieve this objective, PROTECT brings together a very specific partnership made up of adult education organisations coming from Italy, Belgium Spain, Portugal and Germany. Each of the partner organisation will bring to the project its professional expertise, in the field of restorative justice and/or of support to the victims of crime, and it will contribute to the capitalisation of complementary past project experiences (i.e. Erasmus+ project “KINTSUGI” and Justice projects “VictorIIa”, “SupportVoc” and “LetsGoByTalking”) from which is possible to transfer good practices and tools. The working methodology schedules two project phases one for preparation of and one for implementation. Firstly, project partners will set up the peer-learning community by sharing know-how, capitalising tools and practices coming of the projects involved, by jointly organising the capacity building program and the selection system for the personnel who will participate. Then, the 60 hours training programme will be implemented through 3 Short-term joint staff training events to be organised according to the peer-learning principle and non-formal education approach. Participants will be selected among partners’ staff having the following professional profiles: mediators, trainers, lawyers, psychologists, social workers and also external experts, teachers, researches, supervisors working in the partners’ organisations in direct cooperation with the Associated Partners organisations (City of Viterbo Council, Viterbo County and Arnera Social Enterprise from Pisa).Main results achieved by PROTECT will consist of the very creation of a permanent peer-learning community among European experts working in the field of the restorative justice and the protection of victims’ rights; the professional empowerment of staff belonging o the partners’ organisations through the joint training activities; the elaboration of training tools supporting the definition of a European model for training of sector’s operators (as indicated by Directive 2012/29/EU). Thanks to the project, participants will acquire a more specific vision of the potential of the restorative justice paradigm and they will trigger a multiplier effect of project results through their daily work in other contexts in which they use to operate (e.g. penitentiaries, support services for victims, etc.). Finally, PROTECT will set up the right framework for the permanent exchange of European practices between two systems - the restorative justice one and the victims protection one - often operating in parallel when have to manage disputes’ resolution but without any effective operational cooperation between its actors."

CREST aims to equip LEAs with an advanced prediction, prevention, operation, and investigation platform by leveraging the IoT ecosystem, autonomous systems, and targeted technologies and building upon the concept of multidimensional integration and correlation of heterogeneous multimodal data streams (ranging from online content to IoT-enabled sensors) for a) threat detection and assessment, b) dynamic mission planning and adaptive navigation for improved surveillance based on autonomous systems, c) distributed command and control of law enforcement missions, d) sharing of information and exchange of digital evidence based on blockchain, and e) delivery of pertinent information to different stakeholders in an interactive manner tailored to their needs. CREST will also provide chain-of-custody, and path-to-court for digital evidence. Human factors and societal aspects will also be comprehensively addressed, while information packages for educating the wider public on identifying threats and protecting themselves will be prepared and distributed.The platform development will adopt ethics and privacy by-design principles and will be customisable to the legislation of each member state. CREST will be validated in field tests and demonstrations in three operational uses cases: 1) protection of public figures in motorcades and public spaces, 2) counter terrorism security in crowded areas, and 3) Cross-border fight against organised crime (e.g. firearms trafficking). Extensive training of LEAs' personnel, hands-on experience, joint exercises, and training material, will boost the uptake of CREST tools and technologies. With a Consortium of 8 LEAs from 8 European countries, 7 research/academic institutions, 1 civil organisation, and 7 industry partners, CREST delivers a strong representation of the challenges, the requirements and the tools to meet its objectives.