GENERAL INFORMATION
 

Project title
 

IMPROVEMENT OF ENFORCEMENT SERVICES IN PRISONS

Priority area
 

Justice

Beneficiary

the Ministry of Justice’s General Directorate of Prisons and Detention Houses (GDPDH)

Co-Beneficiary
 

Duration

Duration: 27 Months

Start: 03/2013

End: 12/2014 / 07/2015 (PENDING EXTENSION)

EU contribution (Euro)

€ 5,500,000

PROJECT SUMMARY

Brief description of the project and main objectives
 

Addressing the requirements of reform in judiciary and law enforcement services as part of the Copenhagen political criteria has long been a priority for Turkey and EU-Turkey financial cooperation in particular. Turkish criminal justice reform in prisons has received EU’s financial support with the Judicial Modernization and Penal Reform Programme (2005-2007) and Dissemination of Model Prison Practices and Promotion of the Prison Reform in Turkey (2009-2012) as other joint interventions followed through on this mean. Achieving improvement in prison conditions and infrastructure in order to protect the human rights of those that are deprived of their liberty clearly entails some actions towards amending the conditions of the prison staff in charge of treatment of prisoners as to avoid human rights violations as set out by internationally acknowledged standards. As Turkey is not an exception to this challenging task at hand, establishing a statutory framework for a range of recent penal measures and practices to offer modern, professional and humane services to the penal enforcement officers while improving the human resources at the penal system was aimed with the materialization of the project in question.

Turkey is a party to numerous international conventions and regularly monitored by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT). European Commission’s Turkey 2014 Progress Report acknowledges that there is a positive trend in staff training and stipulates that “Reform of the prison system continued. As of August 1612, prison staff members received training on European and international rules and standards and 3248 additional staff were recruited. A shortage of probation officers remained an issue.” The report also raises some concerns on prison conditions such as overcrowding of prisons, shortcomings in the application of international standards in monitoring of prisons and a few individual ill- treatment cases.

As of September 2014, there are 159.475 prisoners in 365 prisons that employs nearly 50.000 personnel suggesting a ratio of one enforcement officer for every 3 prisoners. Within the scope of the project improvement of enforcement services in prisons will be pursued with the execution of three components. This project that was planned to increase the efficiency of the human resources, will include a satisfaction survey for prison officers, drafting job descriptions and occupational standards in the area and training of trainers, designing a curriculum for specialized staff working with different groups of offenders with the means of a twinning contract. Supply component with support from the other components will establish a distance learning system and both the existing training materials of Prison Staff Training Centers and new training material to be produced within the project will be adapted to e-learning modules. A technical assistance contract will ensure the classification of the offenders according to their criminal motives and development of a risk assessment tool and individual focused intervention programs accordingly.

The beneficiary of the project is the Ministry of Justice’s General Directorate of Prisons and Detention Houses (GDPDH) and the intervention in question is being carried out in cooperation with United Kingdom and Portugal as twinning partners. Taking into consideration of the nature of the specific issue addressed,

civil society organization working in the area of penal enforcement may be invited to take part in the project when deemed appropriate.

For the means of enhancing Turkish prison reform, the financial cooperation between Turkey and the EU will continue to yield its results with materialization of other projects by the GDPDH, namely; “TR2009/0136.03 Mental Health Care and Drug Addiction Treatment Services in Prisons”, “TR2012/0323.05 The Strengthening of Probation Services’ Institutional Capacity in Transition to Electronic Monitoring System”, “TR2010/0136.08 Justice for Children” and 2012 ESEI Programme’s “Development of an Effective Risk Evaluation System for Children in Turkish Probation Services” Project.

Location

Achievements / expected outputs

Result 1: High degree of efficiency of enforcement service.

Result 2: Prison management standards increased and treatment of inmates reached to the international standards.