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

Reducing the prison population in Europe: Do community based sentences work?

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Omid Firouzi Tabar, Michele Miravalle, Daniela Ronco, Giovanni Torrente

The research was aimed to understand to what extent the rising emphasis on alternatives is intended for probation to be used more in place of a prison sentence. Therefore, we focused on the relationship between prison and alternatives, in order to explore the extent to which the rise and the decrease in the prison population depends on fluctuations in alternatives.

In a broader perspective, we tried to explore the cultural issue of alternatives and we reflected on the effectiveness in terms of rehabilitative goals.

The data we discussed here have been collected by each partner country and systematised in na-tional reports. The data come from various sources: other than officiai sources (Ministries of Jus-tice, SPACE I and SPACE II, etc.), national reports referred to many unofficial sources, both qualitative (interviews, reports, direct observation, etc.) and quantitative.

The common data collection grid was developed using the European Probation Rules (Recommen-dation CM/Rec (2010) 1 of the Committee of Ministers to Member States on the Council of Europe Probation Rules, adopted on 20 January 2010) as the main reference...read more