Reducing prison population: advanced tools of justice in Europe

The activities of the project are aimed at improving the knowledge and at exchanging innovative measures of practices alternative to imprisonment, both in pre and in post trial phase. The first step of activities regards the collection of information both from scientific literature (in order to enlarge the knowledge on pre and post trial non custodial measures with an update of relevant legislation) and from research activities (in order to collect the existing practices on alternatives to detention in the 7 countries involved in the project - IT, BG, LV, GB, RO, FR, DE).
The second step of the project concerns the identification of good practices in each country and the definition of a first draft of Guidelines for the implementation of alternatives to detention and for the definition of a Training Package targeted to staff working in services providing alternatives to prison settings.
The project also foresees the involvement of an external experts committee, in order to implement a feasibility study of the Training Package and a transferability study of the Guidelines.
Objectives of the project are:

• to enlarge the knowledge on pre and post trial non custodial measures, with an updating of relevant legislation, as well as their costs and effectiveness;
• to map the existing practices related to pre and post trial alternatives to detention through in-depth interviews, which can highlight their strengths and weaknesses;
• to collect the existing good practices on pre and post trial alternatives to detention in countries involved in the project, in order to promote a transnational reflection and a debate on methods used in these practices and on results on offenders and victims;
• to define the Guidelines for the implementation of alternatives to prison in European Countries, in order to provide a model to be followed according to national legislations;
• to define the Training Package targeted to operators and professionals working on services providing alternatives to detention;
• to get a validation of the training package and to make the guidelines transferable to other European context, thanks to the involvement of some external experts;
• to communicate and mainstream the main results of the project through different communication channels.