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Report on the
FOURTH
WORKING SESSION OFFERED TO THE ALBANIAN PRISON
ADMINISTRATION IN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE
IMPROVEMENT OF THE ALBANIAN PRISON SERVICE
Organized by Albanian Helsinki Committee
On 21-22 February 2005
In the
premises of Peqin Penitentiary Institution
Tirana on 24.02.05.
In the framework of its mission of human rights
protection, sensitization and education of the public in
general with human rights, as well as aiming at
supporting the Albanian authorities in their efforts to
deepen reforms in the penitentiary institutions
regarding a better and contemporary management of
Albanian prisons, AHC on 21-22 February 2005 organized
the fourth working session in the premises of Peqin
prison. The manual which served as the basis of this
working session is the Handbook on “An Approach of Human
Rights to Prison Management”, and the European Prison
Rules.
This
fourth working session worked on the assignments
highlighted as concrete needs of the two pilot
penitentiary institutions (Rrogozhina and Peqin Prison
respectively) by the Director General of Prisons and
other high officials during the assessment meetings AHC
and its experts had prior to this activity. More
concretely, the two main objectives of this session were
to offer assistance and expertise to the organizational
and communication structure regarding the two prisons in
Peqin and Rrogozhina and to finalize the final draft of
the house rules of Peqin prison.
This
activity was attended and supported by the Deputy
Director General of Prisons Mr. Hasan Ahmetaj, high
officials of the General Directorate of Prisons,
representatives of the security and education
departments at the General Directorate of Prisons,
prison governors of Rrogozhina, of the pre-detention
institution nr. 313 in Tirana, senior staff of both the
pilot prisons of Rrogozhina and Peqin. Experts who
offered their expertise in this session were Mr. Jan van
den Brand, Director Portfolio External Relations in the
Dutch National Agency of Correctional Institutions in
the Netherlands, at the same time, expert of the
European Council in Eastern and Central Europe and Mr.
Cees Boeij, Director on a special task of drafting the
amendments of the penitentiary law in the Netherlands,
both individuals with a long
experience in management of the penitentiary
institutions. Mrs. Edlira Papavangjeli, Programs’
Coordinator was representing Albanian Helsinki Committee
in this activity.
As
stated above, the main focus of this fourth working
session was given to the issues of the organizational
and communication structure for both pilot prisons.
Experts provided the participants with an introduction
to the vision and goals of their institutions, the ways
to reach such goals, what is meant by an open and a
closed penitentiary institution from the management
perspective, and last but not least they provided the
participants with different organizational and
communication models from the Western Europe and Eastern
and Central Europe. This served as a starting point and
background for the working groups of the Albanian prison
administration. The latter worked on analyzing their own
penitentiary institutions and tried to adjust the models
provided by the experts with the Albanian penitentiary
institutions and the Albanian context. They discussed
the main issues of concern regarding the good vision of
a penitentiary institution operationalized into a good
organizational and communication structure within a
local prison and came with concrete schemes of such
structures. Practical situations in the everyday work
of a penitentiary institution were taken up by experts
such as collective hunger strikes in prisons,
suicide/natural death of a convict in the prison, cases
when the convict does not come back after provided a
leave from the prison administration etc. These cases
were analyzed and later participants provided with the
standard procedures that should be followed in such
cases.
Last
but not least, the session gave sufficient attention to
the finalization of the redrafted house rules of Peqin
prison. This document underwent several changes in
compliance with the comments and suggestions provided by
the experts involved in the previous working sessions
organized by AHC, but still it had room for
improvements. Therefore, experts after having studied
the final draft of the house rules provided the
participants with their concrete comments and
suggestions on each article of the rules seeing it from
the perspective of international standards and at the
same time of the European Prison Rules. This final
amended house rules will be submitted to the Minister of
Justice for approval and can be used afterwards for all
normal security prisons in Albania.
Concluding, the participants, experts and the
representative of the AHC asses this activity as
successful for the objectives set forth where theory and
practice was combined in a fine way . This was also
highlighted in the speeches of the Deputy Director
General of Prisons and other high representatives of
this institution as the beneficiary party in this
activity. The session had several achievements such as
the finalization of the Peqin Prison’s house rules, it
started the process and discussions of the prison
administration on finding the appropriate organizational
and communication structure and last but not least
equipped the participants with standard procedures on
concrete cases often encountered in their work.
This
activity was implemented in the framework of the project
“Reforms of the penitentiary institutions and the role
of the civil society in Albania” financially funded by
the Swedish Helsinki Committee.
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