EUROPEAN COMMITTEE ON CRIME PROBLEMS (CDPC) Council for Penological Co-operation (PC-CP) 63 rd meeting. Strasbourg, March 2010

Transcription

1 Strasbourg, 26 March 2010 pc-cp\docs 2010\pc-cp (2010) 06 - e PC-CP (2010) 06 EUROPEAN COMMITTEE ON CRIME PROBLEMS (CDPC) Council for Penological Co-operation (PC-CP) 63 rd meeting Strasbourg, March 2010 SUMMARY MEETING REPORT prepared by the Directorate General of Human Rights and Legal Affairs The PC CP: BRIEF FOREWORD - Examined the decisions taken at the last CDPC Bureau meeting related to its work; - Discussed its forthcoming work on foreign nationals in prison based on the draft ad hoc terms of reference approved by the CDPC which are expected to be adopted by the Committee of Ministers in April 2010; - In the light of the conclusions of the 15 th CDAP (Edinburgh, 9-11 September 2009) agreed to pursue the work on European Code of Prison Staff Ethics; - Approved elements for a draft resolution to be adopted at the 30 th Council of Europe Conference of Ministers of Justice (Istanbul, November 2010); - Examined and approved SPACE I and SPACE II surveys and took decisions regarding SPACE II; - Examined the question regarding dangerous offenders and agreed on the organisation of its work on this subject;

2 1. The Council for Penological Co-operation (PC-CP) held its 63 rd meeting in Strasbourg on March 2010 with Ms Sonja Snacken in the Chair. The list of participants is appended to this report (Appendix II). I. Opening of the meeting and adoption of the agenda 2. The agenda was adopted (see Appendix I). II. Summary report of the 62 nd meeting [Doc. PC-CP (2009) 10] 3. The PC-CP considered the summary meeting report of its 62 nd meeting and had no comments to make. III. Items for information 4. Mr Carlo Chiaromonte, Head of the Criminal Law Division and Secretary to the CDPC informed of the new policy of the current Secretary General regarding the restructuring of the activities and their regrouping into several core activities. Criminal law will remain one of the important areas of competence of the Council of Europe. In this respect 2009 was considered to be an exceptional year as three standard-setting texts were adopted by the CDPC, one of which, namely Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)01 on the Council of Europe Probation Rules was drafted by the PC-CP. The Committee needs to discuss its working methods in order to take on board the ever growing tasks assigned to it by the CDPC. 5. Mr Chiaromonte informed also of the decisions taken at the last CDPC Bureau meeting (1-2 February 2010) and more specifically of those related to the PC-CP current and future work. He underlined in this respect the need to consider ways for a broader involvement of national experts in the work on dangerous offenders once the comparative study on this issue will be finalised by the PC-CP as agreed by the Bureau. This could be done either by creating a separate expert committee or by organising enlarged PC-CP meetings attended by national experts. 6. The discussion which followed highlighted the need to preserve the European standards in the penitentiary field which is the task of the PC-CP and in parallel to ensure participation of national experts in the work on dangerous offenders, which in the PC-CP opinion could lead to a recommendation and not to a binding legal instrument. The PC-CP was of the opinion that the most efficient way of achieving these aims would be to hold enlarged PC-CP meetings opened to all Council of Europe member States national experts (whose expenses need to be covered by their respective governments). 7. Mr Jörg Polakiewicz, Head of the Law Reform Department informed of the state of preparation of the 30 th Council of Europe Conference of Ministers of Justice and its main topics, which were approved few days before the meeting by the Committee of Ministers. The second of these topics, namely Prisons in Today s Europe has direct link to the PC-CP work and there is an idea to aim at elaborating a binding legal instrument on prisons. The Council of Europe is the only intergovernmental organisation on the continent competent in the field and should take the lead in this field. 8. The discussion which followed revealed that there is a necessity to harmonise prison conditions in Europe but that probably not all countries would be ready to support such a legal instrument. Back in 2006 the CDPC did not support the initiative to draft a binding European Prisons Charter but since then the European Prison Rules were adopted and received very positively by the national authorities. The work of the CPT and the judgements of the European Court of Human Rights reveal certain number of common problems which should be resolved in a harmonised way. IV. Foreign nationals in prison [Doc. PC-CP (2010) 01] 9. The PC-CP examined its draft ad hoc terms of reference as revised by the CDPC Bureau and decided that work could start already at their meeting in May pending the adoption of these terms of reference by the Committee of Ministers. 10. The PC-CP considered necessary to deal with detained foreign nationals at all stages of the criminal process, including possibilities for release from remand custody. Several proposals were made regarding possible scientific experts to be invited to take part in the work and the Secretariat was 2

3 instructed to contact the experts in question so that they could contribute to the work already at the next meeting. V. Dangerous offenders [Docs PC-CP (2010)02; PC-CP (2010)03; CDPC-BU (2010)04rev; PC-CP (2010)04] 11. The PC-CP considered the above documents and listened to the oral presentation made by Ms Nicky Padfield, scientific expert. The participants discussed the possible framework of the comparative study to be carried out by Ms Padfield. It was considered necessary to agree on a definition of the term dangerous offenders as well as on the way it is used in practice as Ms Padfield drew attention to the fact that Canada and England and Wales have the same definition of this term which in reality has led to defining as such 300 prisoners in Canada against 6000 in England and Wales. It is also needed to study how detection of dangerousness is done, methods used to calculate prognostics and to study the dynamics of the process of evaluation. It was considered that a definition based on the one used by Rob Canton would fit the aims of the study, namely an offender who presents a significant risk of causing serious and direct personal physical or psychological harm. 12. It would also be necessary to deal with the case of mentally ill as well as with the practice of recall to prison of lifers after their release from prison. The treatment inside prison as well as in the community and the release conditions should also be examined in the study. It was underlined in this respect that medical and correctional treatments have different aims and sometimes may be in conflict and this should be also highlighted in the report. Some members stressed that in their country risk is assessed only as regards allocation to a prison regime but is not used at the sentencing stage. Therefore the legal, ethical and practical issues arising from risk assessment should also be examined. Some other members stressed that no risk assessment is used in their countries so any such use would be helpful. In some countries risk assessment is used in order to decide how to release an offender and not whether to release him/her. In this respect it was clarified that the currently used risk assessment schemes do not take into consideration cultural differences. Hence the report should have a balanced approach taking into consideration the differences between legal systems. 13. As regards the additional task to consider cases of violent persistent perpetrators of serious cases of domestic violence it was underlined that many of the solutions lie outside the criminal justice system and this should be highlighted in the report as well. 14. It was decided that Ms Padfield will send a first draft of her report by 28 April. It was decided that no questionnaire will be sent out at this point to the national authorities. Instead the draft report finalised by the end of September 2010 and containing country examples will be sent to all CDPC national delegations which could comment or supplement it. The final version of the report should be ready by the end of VI. Follow-up to the outcome and the conclusions of the 15 th Conference of Directors of Prison Administration (Edinburgh, 9-11 September The PC-CP was informed that Mr Andrew Coyle has agreed to undertake the work on European Code of Prison Staff Ethics and that he will attend for that purpose the May meeting of the Committee. VII. Elements for a draft resolution on prisons (preparation of the 30 th Council of Europe Conference of Ministers of Justice) 16. The PC-CP considered and revised a draft resolution on prisons and forwarded it to the CDPC Bureau for consideration. VIII. Implementation of the current and future work priorities of the PC-CP[Doc. PC-CP (2008)04 rev 5] 17. The PC-CP considered its planned activities and decided that the surveys of the implementation in general of Recommendation n R(98)7 and of Recommen dation Rec(2003)23 and in particular regarding the treatment of elderly prisoners and mentally disordered has to be postponed for a later 3

4 time due to its heavy working schedule and the forthcoming first cycle of revision of the European Prison Rules planned for IX. SPACE statistics 18. Marcelo Aebi and Natalia Delgrande, scientific experts presented SPACE I survey for 2088 and SPACE II, survey for Regarding SPACE I it was underlined that the majority of the countries have sent late replies (the deadline being 30 September 2009) with some of them sending replies as late as end of February For a second consecutive year the Russian prison administration has not sent their replies which does not allow having a full picture of the prison population in Europe. 19. The PC-CP members noted the improved quality and presentation of the data in the course of the last years and congratulated the scientific experts for their work. The latter suggested carrying out comparative studies on specific topics (like women prisoners, pre-trial detainees, suicides in prison, etc.) based on SPACE data collected since 25 years already. In relation to this they also suggested to consider creating a software programme for online filling in of the data by the national prison administrations thus facilitating prompt replies. Such a programme could also provide for the possibility for the same to verify and if need be correct data sent in the past. The Secretariat suggested conveying this proposal to the CDPC delegations in order to seek voluntary contributions to finance such a project. 20. Regarding SPACE II, the collection of which was re-initiated last year since one previous attempt in 2003 and which is now based on a revised questionnaire, the scientific experts informed that 25 countries have replied and that the replies were partial on many occasions and there were difficulties in comparing data on some occasions as well. After some discussion it was decided to add to the questionnaire also the definition of probation and probation service as they appear in Recommendation CM/Rec (2010)01 on the Council of Europe Probation Rules, as well as to add a new table in order to allow the national authorities to state which types of community sanctions and measures referred to in the remainder of the questionnaire exist in their legal system. It is a fact that the systems of community sanctions and measures present a number of differences across Europe and a common denominator needs to be found and understood by the national authorities in order to be able to compare data. 21. It was also decided to send to all addressees SPACE II survey for 2007 and to request them to indicate any possible difficulties they have met which did not allow them to reply or to reply comprehensively to it. X. Dates of the next meeting 22. The next meetings for 2010 were scheduled for 5-7 May, 29 September 1 October and 8-10 December

5 Appendix I AGENDA / ORDRE DU JOUR PC-CP (2010) rd summary meeting report 1) Adoption of the agenda / Adoption de l ordre du jour 2) Summary report of the last meeting / Rapport sommaire de la dernière réunion PC-CP (2010) OJ 1 Bilingue PC-CP (2009) 10 3) Information / Informations 4) Dangerous offenders/ Délinquants dangereux PC-CP (2010)02 PC-CP(2010)03 CDPC-BU (2010)04rev PC-CP(2010)04 English 5) Foreign nationals in prison / Détenus etrangers PC-CP (2010)01 6) Follow-up to the conclusions of the 15th Conference of Directors of Prison Administration (9-11 September 2009, Edinburgh) /Suite à donner aux conclusions de la 15-è Conférence des directeurs d administration pénitentiaire ( 9-11 septembre 2009, Edimbourg) CDAP(2009) 04 7) 30th Council of Europe Conference of the Ministers of Justice (Istanbul, November 2010) / 30e conférence du Conseil de l Europe des ministres de la justice (Istanbul, novembre 2010) PC-CP (2010) 05 English only 8) Implementation of the current and future work priorities of the PC-CP/ Mise en oeuvre des priorités de travail actuel et futur du PC-CP PC-CP(2008)04 rev 5 9) SPACE statistics/statistiques SPACE 10) Dates of the next meetings / Dates des prochaines réunions 5

6 Appendix II MEMBERS / MEMBRES Ms Marta FERRER PUIG Head of the Department of Social and Criminological Research and Training, Centre for Legal Studies and Specialized Training (CEJFE), Carrer Ausiàs March BARCELONA (Spanish / Espagnol) Mr Antanas JATKEVICIUS Head of Penal and Administrative Law Unit, Legal Department, Office of the Parliament, 53 Gedimino Ave, LT VILNIUS (Lithuanian / Lituanien) Ms Natalya KHUTORSKAYA Researcher at the Laboratory, Research Institute, Federal Service of the Execution of Sentences, Rue Narvskaya 15a, RUS MOSCOW (Russian / Russe) Ms Irene KOECK Director in the Austrian Prison Administration, Federal Ministry of Justice, Museumstrasse 7 (Palais Trautson), A VIENNA (Austrian / autrichienne) Mr Roger McGARVA Former Head of Regions and Performance, National Probation Directorate, Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of De Montefort, Leicester, 55 Henry Road, WEST BRIDGFORD, Nottingham, GB - Nottinghamshire NG2 7NB (British / Britannique) Ms Sonja SNACKEN Chair of the PC-CP / Présidente du PC-CP Professor, Department of Criminology, Faculty of Law and Criminology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, B BRUSSELS (Belgian / Belge) Mr Pavel STERN Director of the Czech Probation and Mediation Service, Ministry of Justice, Headquarters of Probation and Mediation Service (Probacni a mediacni sluzba), Hybernska 18, CZ PRAGUE 1 (Czech / tchèque) Mr Riccardo TURRINI VITA Judge at the Court of Appeal, Director General of Community Sanctions, Department of Penitentiary Administration, Ministry of Justice, Largo Luigi Daga 2, I ROMA (Italian / Italien) Mr André VALLOTTON Ancien Délégué du Conseil d Etat aux Affaires pénitentiaires, Département de la Securité et de l Environnement du canton de Vaud, Place du Château 1, CH LAUSANNE (Swiss / Suisse) SCIENTIFIC EXPERTS / EXPERTS SCIENTIFIQUES Mr Marcelo AEBI Professeur, Vice-directeur, Ecole des sciences criminelles, Université de Lausanne, ICDP - Sorge Batochime, CH-1015 LAUSANNE Ms Natalia DELGRANDE Ecole des sciences criminelles, Université de Lausanne, ICDP - Sorge Batochime, CH-1015 LAUSANNE Ms Nicky PADFIELD Senior Lecturer, Law Faculty, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0DG, United Kingdom PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS 6

7 EUROPEAN COMMITTEE FOR THE PREVENTION OF TORTURE AND INHUMAN OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT (CPT) INTERNATIONAL NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANISATIONS / ORGANISATIONS INTERNATIONALES NON-GOUVERNEMENTALES EUROPEAN ORGANISATION FOR PROBATION / ORGANISATION EUROPÉENNE DE LA PROBATION (CEP) Mr Leo TIGGES Secretary General, P.O. Box 8215, 3503 RE Utrecht, The Netherlands UNITED NATIONS CHILDREN S FUND (UNICEF) Mr Jean-Claude LEGRAND Senior Regional Advisor Child Protection, UNICEF Regional Office CEE-CIS INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR PRISON STUDIES Mr Rob Allen Director, International Centre for Prison Studies, King's College London OTHER PARTICIPANTS/ AUTRES PARTICIPANTS PENAL REFORM INTERNATIONAL (PRI) Ms Mary Murphy Policy Director, Commercial Street, London E1 6LT SECRETARIAT/SECRETARIAT Law Reform Department / Service des réformes législatives Mr Jörg POLAKIEWICZ Head of the Law Reform Department / Chef du Service des réformes législatives Criminal Law Division / Division du droit pénal M. Carlo CHIAROMONTE Head of the Criminal Law Division / Chef de la Division du droit pénal Secretary to the CDPC / Secrétaire du CDPC Ms Ilina TANEVA Secretary to the PC-CP / Secrétaire auprès du PC-CP Ms Marjaliisa JÄÄSKELÄINEN Assistant / Assistante Ms Marianne GRONLI Trainee / Stagiaire Mr Gerard BRUIN Trainee / Stagiaire 7

8 INTERPRETERS/INTERPRETES Mme Maryline NEUSCHWANDER Mme Monique PALMIER-RICHTER M. Olivier OBRECH 8