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Juvenile justice systems in Europe have undergone considerable changes during the past 20 years, particularly in the former socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region. These legal and structural changes concerned the implementation of alternative measures, diversion, victim-offender mediation and other restorative techniques in the majority of the countries in the CEE region.

Despite these positive movements, juvenile justice systems still have been characterized by a focus on punishment rather than rehabilitation, prosecution rather than diversion, and on detention rather than community alternatives. These practices often respond to public demands on reacting towards juvenile delinquency by more severe sanctioning. Even though the current legislation in the target CEE countries (Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary) recognises restorative approaches such as mediation, as well as sentences of community service, in most cases, these are rarely imposed. Belgium is also a target country, where restorative approaches are recognised and best practice can be identified (and will be collected throughout the project) however the main actors are still reluctant to use the existing system of diversion/restorative justice and use instead deprivation of liberty as main measure.

In this context of improvement, amongst fluctuations and challenges, in diverting children in conflict with the law from imprisonment, the following determined challenge remains in the target CEE countries: diversion and alternatives to imprisonment are generally less accessible for children from rural areas and the poorest backgrounds. In this way, juvenile justice reforms are confined to the Capital City; data on juvenile sentencing practices in general, and diversion in particular, is not available, incomplete, and in most cases, inaccessible; there is little or no evidence of progress in continued use of services; limited availability of after-care services that support reintegration into society for children who have been in conflict with the law and  juvenile justice professionals often do not use practices in the area of diversion due to lack of services and limited knowledge of child-friendly judicial practices.

It appears that while there are available services and opportunities for diversion, the current measures are not appropriate, effective, or even recorded as such, so while most legislation now recognises diversion, the recognition is characterised by narrow limits. It comes out that introducing diversion not only requires new legal and procedural frameworks, but also a shift in the roles and aims of the juvenile justice systems.

In this regard, the project ‘AWAY - Alternative Ways to Address Youth’ (JUST/2015/RCHI/AG/PROF) seeks to promote the use of diversion in order to have, in practice, a child friendly approach to the juvenile justice system. To address the challenges in this area, this project will conduct research and develop an empirical evidence base on diversion that will inform the juvenile justice in the region; it will provide professional support to multidisciplinary professionals to become more aware and better equipped in using diversion mechanisms and finally; it will endeavour to enhance public awareness on the benefits of diversion for children. 

MAIN ACTIVITIES

• Research in Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary and Romania to identify the challenges or obstacles for the use of diversion and map existing alternative services for children in rural areas.
• Identify and map good practices and experiences in Belgium.
• Work with children at risk or in conflict with the law in Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary and Romania as members of child advisory boards to ensure that their experiences, views, opinions are reflected and considered throughout all project activities.
• Develop and implement an interactive online learning course for multidisciplinary professionals including two face-to-face sessions with professionals in three locations of each country, one-on-one and group mentoring sessions, and online forum discussions.
• Create and launch a public campaign in each country influencing public perceptions about juvenile offenders and promoting alternative sentencing as beneficial for the development of children and their better integration in society as productive members. Specific advocacy events targeting EU Member States and the Council of Europe.
• Publish stories and articles, increasing publicity on the subject.

Click here to go to the project's web section on the IJJO website.

The project ‘FACT FOR MINORS – Fostering Alternative Care for Troubled Minors’ intends to address children with psychological, psychiatric or personality disorders, hosted by alternative care communities (or socio-educational communities) as a consequence of penal measures.

Research interests in mental health problems in juvenile justice have grown over the past years, as several studies throughout the world have shown that mental disorders are highly prevalent among children under penal measures. This represents a significant problem, even more so if the special needs of these children remain unidentified and unaddressed, with significant long-term effects on their life chances and on their physical and mental health and well-being.

The issues raised in European justice systems by children serving a penal measure in alternative care communities that show evidence of psychological, psychiatric or personality disorders, have been poorly addressed. In general, the dilemma posed by the intervention with children in the juvenile justice with such disorders lies in the fact that an inadequate therapeutic response may lead to chronical psychiatric disorders, while an inadequate socio-educational response may result in further marginalisation.

The main issue is that these children need adequate clinical attention and present clinical dilemmas, which is why they are often a real challenge for the social workers in alternative care communities. The response to this challenge cannot lay in parallel interventions by the juvenile justice and the health sectors; instead, it lays in a proper integration of the interventions of the two agencies and of the different professionals that work for or with these children. Indeed, managing children with psychological, psychiatric or personality disorders in alternative care communities requires a holistic, multidisciplinary and multiagency approach, focused on prevention, evaluation, treatment (including emergency treatment), and recovery, considering risk evaluation of clinical and legal relapse. Such approach is therefore both therapeutic and socio-educational.

In this context, this project intends to reinforce the capacity of alternative care communities in five European Union (EU) countries -Finland, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain- to adequately support and respond to the specific needs of the children with psychiatric disorders under penal measures.

Such aim will be pursued by a two-fold action that will seek to:

• Strengthen the capacity of, and the coordination between, all professionals working with and for children in alternative care to address the needs of children with psychiatric disorders; and
• Boost interagency cooperation, in particular on issues related to the alternative care of minors under penal measures and with psychiatric disorders.

MAIN ACTIVITIES

• Successful intervention methods to address the needs of children with mental health disorders in alternative care will be identified, adapted and tested. The activities in this sense are the collection of statistic and qualitative data, where available, as well as the review of the existing national literature, practices and legal framework on alternative care communities and minors with psychological or personality disorders.
• Capacity building with professionals working with or for children in alternative care in 5 partner countries and at European level through an e-learning platform. First, a needs assessment of the identified setting for the capacity-building activities is performed; second, for the engagement of the professionals for the capacity building, there is a presentation of the project aims, the identification of the professionals’ needs and institutional strengths, and the development of a capacity-building methodology. This methodology will be tested with the partners’ supervision, and followed by several national, transnational and experts meetings and national reports.
• Strengthening of multi-agency and multi-disciplinary cooperation in the area of child protection in the 5 partner countries also through finalization of formal commitments. National multi-agency meetings will be held to contribute to this end.
• Development of outputs aimed at ensuring maximum impact, visibility and sustainability of the project results and in particular of the capacity building methodology developed. The outputs will be the European guidelines for the alternative care of children with special needs and the European Handbook for professionals working with children in alternative care. A website of the project will also be set up, and the project outputs’ impact will be verified at the national level by the corresponding Ministries.
• Communication and dissemination events to present project resulst and raise awareness on the rights of children in alternative care. The dissemination events will be held at the national level by the corresponding Ministries, and a final conference will be organised in Brussels. Finally, all partners will contribute to the dissemination of the project’s results through social media and events.

Click here to go to the project's web section on the IJJO website.

As the European agenda entails, the issue of radicalisation and countering violent extremism has increasingly become a priority for every European Union (EU) Member State. The radicalisation of EU citizens, which may go as far as their departure to fight for terrorist and extreme violent organisations such as IS, poses a genuine security threat to the European Union, its member states and neighbouring countries.

The quickening pace of this phenomenon means that repressive measures are no longer sufficient and that a new strategy based on prevention needs to be adopted.

The project “The prevention of juvenile radicalisation: Promoting the use of alternatives to detention through judicial training” will address the issue of juvenile radicalisation in detention, within and outside the prison system, through the sharing of knowledge and good practices between judicial professionals and actors of several EU Member States (EUMS), especially those drawing on cross-sector collaboration. It is based on the assumption that efforts to promote disengagement from violence and extremism will be more effective if they build on existing structures for crime prevention and rehabilitation.

The activities proposed in this project, and especially the training programme, will therefore target in priority the judiciary and judicial staff: judges, prosecutors and court officers, as well as other legal practitioners and actors involved in the justice system: lawyers, probation officers, educators, mediators and policymakers, as being the group most susceptible of benefiting of, and implementing, knowledge and good practices shared and learnt through the project.

The project will be focused on the three following themes:

The prevention of radicalisation in detention.

Tertiary prevention and reinsertion.

De-radicalisation processes through alternatives to detention, including community and family based approaches to de-radicalisation.

Main Activities

• Overview of the situation of radicalisation among youngsters in Europe and the use of alternatives to detention in EUMS: providing in-depth research on the situation of radicalisation among youngsters and the use of alternatives to detention in the 28 EUMS. This research is provided by two external consultants, specialists on radicalisation and judicial training issues, who are also in charge of the training package. A group of 4 experts also contributes to this diagnosis and analysis by sharing their knowledge and experience in order to improve the contents of the training package. Furthermore, each partner participates to the research by providing a national report on the situation of radicalisation and the use of alternatives to detention in their home country.
• National practice-oriented training and knowledge sharing: exchanging policies, learning from good practices and training of the trainers concerning the prevention of radicalisation and the use of alternatives to detention in partners' countries. This activity, in which all partners will participate, consists of 3 national meetings organised in Germany, Belgium and Spain, each one being focused on a specific theme and composed of a national workshop to exchange on good practices, a study visit and a training session led by the two external consultants -who produce the training package.
• Training manual: production, and subsequent translation into national languages, of a training package. The training manual is composed of 5 volumes: 1. European policy and theoretical framework; 2. Prevention of radicalisation in detention; 3. Community-based and family intervention; 4. Tertiary prevention experiences; 5. National reports and highlight of good practices. It is intended for the partners and national stakeholders in order to allow for its dissemination at a national level in the partner’s countries through national workshops.
• Online training course: production of a self-learning activity based on the training manual and hosted on the IJJO e-learning platform in each of the partners’ languages that will be open to stakeholders in each partner’s country.
• Knowledge diffusion and final conference: recommendations on the prevention of radicalisation and the use of alternatives to detention for youngsters will be embodied in a policy brief, while the results of the project will be presented during a final conference in Paris that will bring together all the partners of the project and European Council for Juvenile Justice’ members (especially from the Judiciary and the Public Administration sections).

Click here to go to the project's web section on the IJJO website.

Kenya has ratified all of the key international human rights treaties guaranteeing the respect of human rights within detention facilities. It also enshrined most of the key global human rights principles within its 2010 Constitution. However, despite the presence of a fairly comprehensive legislative framework, implementation of human rights enforcement mechanisms remains poor in Kenya. This poor implementation increases the likelihood of human rights violations within Kenyan correctional facilities.

Within this context, the project ‘Strengthening Human Rights within Correctional Facilities in Kenya’ aims to eradicate all forms of human rights violations within detention and custodial facilities in Kenya.

Utilising the wide experience of the project coordinator, the European Committee for Training and Agriculture (CEFA), and the other partners from the justice administration and penal reform sector in Kenya, the project intends to protect detainees’ human rights by promoting policy dialogue, advocacy and support of Kenyan Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) to ensure effective law enforcement. The project addresses the issues of delayed reforms and fragmented intervention by strengthening the HRDs’ role and their coordination with different authorities through an inter-agency approach, alongside improving monitoring processes in correctional facilities. The Justice System’s National Plan on Human Rights and its policy and advocacy components have supported systemic and integrated coordination among the main HRDs, dealing with administration of justice in Kenya and spearheading the actual implementation of existing delayed reforms.

As a project partner, the IJJO has published an analysis of human rights violations within correctional facilities in Kenya, titled 'Human Rights and Deprivation of Liberty in Kenya: An analysis of the human rights’ situation and guidelines for an internal monitoring system'. Within the framework of this publication, the IJJO has also developed guidelines on best practice of monitoring and reporting human rights violations, created in the course of the project within Kenyan detention facilities. The main purpose of this publication is to provide evidence-based recommendations on human rights protection and violation prevention. This aims not only to support the implementation of the project itself, but also to support institutional authorities, policy makers and practitioners in the construction of evidence-based action plans and the establishment of effective monitoring and reporting systems.

Download the report: 'Human Rights and Deprivation of Liberty in Kenya'

The European Council has noted that “excessively long periods of pre-trial detention are detrimental for the individual, can prejudice judicial cooperation between the member states and do not represent the values for which the European Union stands”, considering that pre-trial detention offers important justice safeguards while it is intended as an exceptional measure. Over-use of this measure is ruining lives and using a large amount of European Union countries’ resources.

There is a clear need for guaranteeing minimum conditions when a minor is arrested before trial. Despite this, there are no common rules for all Member States in relation to procedures and conditions of such preventive detention and pre-trial detention, regardless of the interest of United Nations and European Union Institutions.

Therefore, in order to comply with the minimum rules, the MIPREDET project aims to explore the situation in different countries in Europe, in order to recommend measures to be applied to fulfil the identified needs and assess how the new proposal for a Directive of The European Parliament and of the Council on procedural safeguards for children suspected or accused in criminal proceedings is being applied in practice. The target groups of the project are: organisations related to juvenile justice; experts (researchers, university professors); custodial centre staff; justice practitioners (judges, attorneys, lawyers); policy makers; and law enforcement authorities.

The project is scheduled to last 24 months. It started in June 2015 and will end in June 2017.

For more information, click here.