Prison Achievement Award 2024

At EuroPris, we want to annually highlight and celebrate developments, overcoming challenges, and initiatives that have been implemented in prisons across Europe. We know from our engagement with prisons that there are many excellent examples of practice and innovation which have been implemented in recent years. For this reason, we would like to award the next local European prison by giving it the 'Prison Achievement Award'. This is your chance to share your experience of your prison with the correctional arena in 2024 !

About

The developments taking place within prisons are wide-ranging and have resulted in positive and tangible improvements for the prison community.

We know that there are significant examples of first-class practices among your prisons and services. From improvements in prisoners’ regimes, access, and participation in education, cooperation with external services and stakeholders, healthcare, care, and reintegration pathways, to innovative improvements in buildings and infrastructure, digitalisation and physical conditions, to better staff support and wellbeing, to positive changes in culture.

Given that work takes place behind walls and rarely gets the public attention it deserves, we believe an annual award will help to highlight and shine a spotlight on your prisons’ success and achievements.

The Prison Achievement Award will bring these initiatives into the open, facilitating mutual learning between European prison facilities and raising awareness of how local prisons come up with solutions that will unite our network.

We introduced the Prison Achievement Award in 2022. See the winners for 2022 and 2023 below.

Winner

The winner will be selected by EuroPris members at the Annual General Meeting on 26 June 2024 in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Selection Process

All eligible candidates will be considered by a Selection Board that will make recommendations and shortlist five candidates. The top five candidates will be presented in video and writing to the members at the AGM. The Selection Board consists of 2-3 EuroPris Board Members and 1-2 international experts.

Presentation of Award

The Director General of the country of the awarded prison will receive the Prison Achievement Award at the AGM, as representative of the winner prison.

Share Your Experience

We invite prison practitioners from the Council of Europe region to apply NOW for 2024 ! The deadline for submissions is 14 April 2024!

Apply now!

Eligibility Criteria for Nominations

In order to be deemed eligible for consideration, your nomination should meet all of the following criteria:

European - Prisons from correctional services in the Council of Europe region.
Local - Significant development of a correctional facility at a local level, not a national prison service.
Impactful - Results should show improvement and impact in one or more clearly defined areas.
Sustainable - Results need to be possible to maintain over time, not a (temporary) project that ends with its funding.
Recent - Development must have been implemented in the last 5 years.
A New Departure - Change is unique, original, or highly innovative.

Winners of Prison Achievement Award 2023

The 2023 Prison Achievement Award was awarded to the Centre Penitenciari Quatre Camins & the Centre Peniteciari Mas d’Enric – Catalonia (Spain) for the development of ‘Immersive Virtual Reality in Intimate Gender Violence Rehabilitation Programs in Prison’. This edition had 38 applications in total.

Virtual reality (VR) allows the user to be immersed in environments in which they can experience situations and social interactions from different perspectives by means of virtual embodiment. In the context of rehabilitation of violent

behaviors, a participant could experience a virtual violent confrontation from different perspectives, including that of the victim and bystanders. This approach and other virtual scenes can be used as a useful tool for the rehabilitation of

intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetrators, through the improvement of their empathic skills or for training in nonviolent responses. This project is about the use of this tool in a prison environment for the rehabilitation of IPV perpetrators with a particular focus on practical aspects based on our experience.

Read more about the other shortlisted winners.

Click here to read about the winners in 2023

Winners of Prison Achievement Award 2022

The Prison Achievement Award celebrates annually developments and initiatives that have been implemented across Europe. In 2022 it was the first year the award was introduced. There were 24 applications submitted and the top 5 shortlisted candidates were selected by an independent Jury. The main winner of the Prison Achievement Award 2022 presented at the AGM in Seville was Prison Veenhuizen, for their concept 'Innovation Lab', a unique collaboration between the prison in Veenhuizen and the Hanze University Groningen working on the initiative Family Approach.

Read more about the other shortlisted winners.

Click here to read about the winners in 2022

Contact

www.europris.org

[email protected]