Regional meeting on the structural and strategic development of penitentiary staff
On Tuesday the 13th of April 2021, a regional meeting was held between the NHC and its partners in Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia. A partnership that came to fruition due to a collective need to work ‘Towards a Safe, Stimulating and Rehabilitative Prison Environment for Children and Juveniles in Conflict with the Law in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia,’ a project that is funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. The aim of the regional meeting was to reflect on the work of the successful partnership and to gather differing perspectives from multiple levels and stimulating a mutual exchange of experiences and knowledge. NHC Executive Director Pepijn Gerrits and Venera Ramaj, Senior Officer/ Policy Advisor Rule of Law at the Embassy of the Netherlands in Pristina opened the event by emphasising the need for multi-level cooperation between different actors of the criminal justice chain, “from international and governmental agencies to civil society and the correctional staff members themselves.”
Continuing on the goal of increasing multi-level cooperation, highly knowledgeable speakers were invited to share their expertise in the meeting. Among the topics discussed was the Strategic and evidence-based development of correctional staff competences, the International and interagency cooperation in developing training curricula as well as the Continuous training and sustainable transfer of methodologies, knowledge and skills to the workplace. For the latter we were joined by Rik Koot and Christa Schrier from the Educational Institute of the Custodial Institutions Agency in the Netherlands, who provided a Dutch perspective on the transferability of staff skills and competences. They highlighted the importance of a continuous learning cycle, stating:
Information does not become knowledge until it acquires meaning in the real world
The meeting report delves into the topics discussed above, as well as outlining lessons learned: click here to find out more.
