1. EUROPE AND ITS CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

As time goes by, Europe is getting more involved on security prisons matters and their penal systems. The penal and penitentiary law on every Member State, always considered of exclusive national interest, is progressively being influenced by the European Institutions. Nowadays, there is a European structure to protect the rights and guarantees currently existing on prisons.

From a normative point of view, there are the minimum standards provided by the European Prisons Rules. Although without coercive power they do impose a political and moral obligation to adapt to the forty-three states of the Council of Europe.

The European Commission for the Prevention of Torture and every Inhuman Treatment, established in 1989 develops a function of prevention and control. It also has the power to visit any places where privation of freedom.

Their reports and the state answers are an important source of knowledge about how punishments are dealt in prisons and police stations.

From a jurisdictional point of view, there is a European Court of Human Rights -ECHR-since 1950, established by the Convention for the Prevention of Human and Fundamental Rights. It consists of a jurisdictional body based on the principle of universality and is often asked to rule on matters of people suffering from the privation of freedom.

The Court's jurisprudence, along with the European Penitentiary Rules of 1987 and the recommendations of the European Commission for the Prevention of Torture, gives life to a set of rules established to protect and preserve the human rights of individuals.

The analysis and direct observations of NGOs and academic institutions about penitentiary conditions on different countries, along with the Court's jurisprudence and the Committee for the prevention of torture-CPT reports, aims to establish a framework, which will help the supranational -European legal approximation towards dealing effectively with human rights, as well as the humanisation of punishment.

2. ANALYTICAL CONTEXT

Penal execution is facing up intensive transformations, quantitative and qualitatively. The European prisoners population is progressively increasing as well as the one submitted to external penal execution. The field of penal control includes sophisticated ways of electronic supervision, which are also expanding continuously.

From the qualitative point of view, we need to point the progressive convergence between the external penal execution and the penal execution inside prison.

Therefore, the changes made to the subjective profile of individuals under penal execution, among whom we differentiate between those who are in prison as a result of drug-related matters and those coming from countries outside the Community (this data is relevant for penal execution of minors inside prison).

These transformations can be found on many Occidental countries, and mainly reflect changes which have taken place on European societies. This affects on the demands for penal control that the mentioned societies bring to the judicial bodies. Furthermore and above all, transformations generate a radical change in the model of rehabilitation based on standards of social disadvantages.

All this creates a necessity to understand what nowadays is the final objective of the punishment in the different countries, in order to answer and prevent the demands for security coming from the metropolitan areas of Europe.

3. SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

Main objectives of the European Observatory:

· To produce a framework of the Penal Execution reality in the different European countries · To outline the new intervention needs for social rehabilitation, based on the study of social and cultural conditions and the analysis of the individuals submitted to penal execution · To verify the coincidence of national policies and needs of social rehabilitation · To build up a computer database, allowing the monitoring of the trends, and the public interventions and policies as well as the private actions aimed to attend the population subject to penal execution

4. GENERAL OBJECTIVES

The European Observatory has the following general objectives:

· To individualise the penal and penitentiary legislation and criminal policies of some European countries · To inform and open up places, allowing for transparency · To prevent the temptation to violate the human rights of individuals · To elaborate the information in order to value and monitor comparing each national situation

5. METHODOLOGY

The investigation bears in mind the recollection, treatment and publishing of all the information related to penal execution in order to attain the objectives described above. Particularly, it acknowledges data and news from four different sources:

· Official statistics and internal and international normative on penitentiary order and punishment execution. · Research made on penitentiary law and sociology of pain, in the different countries compared. · Interviews and testimonies obtained within the administration and the officers in charge of applying the punishment established. · And information of the inside prisons life.

Once the recollection and aggregation of data has been finished, it will be classified country by country, allowing to cross and exploit the information obtained.

The working group will observe the number of prisons, the number of prisoners, and the percentage in terms of the entire population; the average length of the punishment imposed and the one finally executed; the typology of offences, divided by the different reasons why people got incarcerated; the typology of penal convictions; criminality rates; the number of people submitted to alternative measures and its percentage out of the total population; the percentage of relations between 1) penal guardian operators, total population and incarcerated; 2) treatment operators, population and incarcerated; 3) doctors, population and incarcerated.

The other possible categories to divide the information sources are:

- activities (work, instruction, sports,...) - services and structures (open spaces, green areas, sanitary services, libraries, sport facilities,...) - subjective conditions (immigrants, drugs, AIDS,...) - internal regime (leisure time, regulations and its application, relationship with the invigilants, and the management, the relationships of the people from the administration with the voluntary workers,...) - alternative measures to custodial sentences (applications, concessions, modality of execution,...) - territorial offerings (local government compromise, integration structures once recovered the freedom, work offers for prisoners and those submitted to some modalities of open-regimes, firms that employ individuals after their custodial sentence has ended, ...

Another issue is the report of abuses, domestic violence and maltreatments declared by supranational organisms dealing within human rights.

Later on, alongside with the possibility to consult the documents and reports prepared by the Observatory, whether via the constitution of documentation centres open to the general public, or via the incorporation in a telematic network of the most relevant materials, there is also the final publication of the Report on Penal Execution and the Imprisonment Conditions in Europe. The publication of this work will show the main indicators and trends of the penal execution, in order to provide public interventions aimed to the social rehabilitation of the punished, the prevention of violence and the violations of human rights.

The Observatory should have one centre in each participating country, as well as a supranational headquarter.

6. PROJECT PHASES

a) Preliminary Phase:

- Constitution of the Working Group - Creation of the filters to collect the official statistical data and the normative sources, and the creation of the questionnaires for the interviews. - Sensitisation of the professionals

b) Development Phase:

- Interviews and data recollection - Treatment of the information obtained - Creation of the telematic database and the Documentation Centre

c) Conclusive Phase:

- Press conference to present the outcome of the investigation - Opening of the Centre to the public - Public discussion on the outcomes of the investigation - Publishing of the Report on Penal Execution

Translated by: Marta Plana Dropez. Observatory of the Penal system and Human Rights. University of Barcelona.

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