Alternatives - Out of the shadow

Here you can find a short video, based on interviews to experts on prison serving and alternatives to detention, produced with the contribution of all project partners. The main goal of this product is to convey the different impact on the offender of serving a sentence in or outside prison, and the likely different outcomes in terms of social resettlement and prevention of new offences.

Here you can watch a longer version of the video

Manifesto for a new penal culture

After over two centuries of penitentiaries as the principal instrument of criminal sentencing, and countless penal reform efforts, the same basic problems remain: the abuses; recidivism; the high social and financial costs. Alternative sentences have shown the potential to minimize all of these problems. However, the use of alternatives has not altered an in creasing reliance on incarceration (10 million prisoners worldwide, of which one and a half million are in Europe), a practice which, in principle, should be ultima ratio, last resort. The primacy of prison sentences reflects the logic of how trials are organised. Centred on the evaluation of culpability,trials exclude the victims from meaningful participation and, in spite of the presumed-innocence principle, are charged with stigmas from the outset. Concepts such as restorative justice criticize the insularity of the criminal justice system and its focus on punishment and prison...read more