Prisons in Europe are not only very different within one country, but also vary much between countries and regions. Many questions arise when it comes to planning, constructing, renovating prison facilities. Are they fit for their purpose in the 21st century? Are current prisons unjustifiably expensive? How could savings be made on real estate? How could prison premises become structurally more efficient and how to deal with underlying drivers of inefficiency? How could we be more effective with a better design and location choice?
Some countries in Europe replace old, expensive to maintain and ill-equipped prisons with new buildings. What is their new for old strategy? What are the experiences with private-public sector arrangements? How do we introduce more flexibility into real estate – enabling us to better respond to changes in the prison population? How could we realise more efficient prison buildings – with lower running costs, reductions in maintenance spending and intelligent use of technology.
Expert Group Meeting 2020
EuroPris started in 2020 for the third time an expert group on Real estate and Logistics. Due to Covid-19 the new expert group was unfortunately not able to meet and get to know each other in person. The group met twice online in the course of 2020.
The first online meeting in June was used for a round of introductions and expectations from the work of the group. In particular, participants shared how the Covid-19 pandemic had impacted their prison service and the work that had occurred to limit the spread of COVID-19 within the prisons. The group discussed and agreed to work on a range of possible Real Estate topics (like designing for rehabilitation, designing for women, modern methods of construction, energy management and sustainability) that are relevant and of interest to themselves and should be of benefit/interest to the wider Prison Community.
In the October meeting, the group also decided to work on drafting a Real Estate Matrix that would allow the generation of some comparative data from European Prison Services.
Real Estate and Logistics Workshop 2019
The Ljubljana Workshop provided an opportunity to share the work undertaken by the group on Prison Design, Public Private Partnerships, Designing for Rehabilitation together with the forthcoming report on the Design of Finland’s Women’s prison. The programme incIuded a module led by the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) on their publication on prison planning and design (Towards Humane Prisons, 2018) and will include an examination of the findings generated from the latest ‘Designing for Rehabilitation’ report. In addition there was also opportunity to explore topics of interest raised by member countries at the EuroPris Annual General Meeting alongside those identified for further examination by the Real Estate & Logistics expert group.
Click here to see agenda from the workshop.
Click here to see presentations from the workshop.
Click here to see report from the workshop.
Expert Group Meeting 2019
The Real Estate and Logistics Expert Group meeting took place in May 2019 in Istanbul, Turkey and it was kindly hosted by the General Directorate of Prisons and Detention House of Turkey.
Click here to view the report from the meeting.
Expert Group Meeting 2018
Early October 2018, the Real Estate expert group has met in Stockholm to continue their working activities for the period 2017 to 2019. Participating experts came from Northern Ireland, Finland, Belgium, Turkey, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden, and The Netherlands. During the meeting, hosted by the Swedish Prison and Probation Service (SPPS), the experts visited the Kronoborg Remand Prison and the Forensic Institution Helix in the Stockholm area. During the presentations about actual developments in their Services some other Topics were integrated into the discussions: Technology, Facility Management Delivery Models, Custodial Fixtures and Fittings, Designing Accommodation, Energy Management, Sustainability, Modern Methods of Construction. Furthermore, 2 reports that are under construction, Designing for Rehabilitation & Designing for women in Prisons were discussed. At the end of December 2018 and January 2019, both reports will be ready to be published on the EuroPris Website.
Presentations were given by each expert about the latest developments in their services, click below to view the presentations:
To view the notes from the meeting, click below to download:
Expert Group Meeting 2017
In 2017 a new expert group was formed that will work from 2017 to 2019. Participating experts are from Northern Ireland, Finland, Belgium, Turkey, England & Wales, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden and The Netherlands. The group met for the first time 25-26 September in Ghent, Belgium. During the meeting the experts had the chance to visit the Ghent Prison and the Forensic Psychiatric Centre in Ghent. Next to presentations about recent development in their Services the experts discussed: Academic research in the field of prison design; Introduction of IP solutions in operational prisons; Sustainable design and Prison design for Normalisation / The Wellbeing prison. In the coming two years the experts will draft two reports. One will be a literature review of evidence based prison design and the other report will focus on the design of female prisons.
Expert Group Meeting 2016
The expert group on Real estate & logistics met for the second time this year on 21 November 2016. After the first meeting the group drafted a report on Public Private Participation for the construction of new prisons. Download the Public Private Participantion report here. The second meeting of the group was hosted by the Criminal Sanctions Agency in Helsinki on 12 & 13 October. The main subject of the meeting was Prison Design. Experts from Northern Ireland, England, Slovenia, Belgium, Czech Republic and Finland shared their current prison design projects. Discussions also included: stakeholder involvement and reviews to assess needs and to define design requirements, design criteria and standards setting, tender evaluation and long-term strategic planning. Presentations of the meeting can be downloaded here.
The Prison Design report (2017) is available here.
Expert Group Meeting 2016
A subgroup of the Real estate and Logistics expert group met on 20-22 April in the Netherlands to discuss and in-depth investigate on the subject of Private Public Partnership. The meeting was co-hosted by the Dutch Custodial Institutions Agency. As a result of a meeting, a report was drafted elaborating the what, why, how and when to use PPP for cooperation between the government and the private sector in the construction of new prisons. The report also discusses the different types and phases of PPP, as well as lessons learned and conclusions. Download the full report here.
Expert Group Meeting 2015
The first Meeting of the EuroPris Real Estate/Logistics Expert Group took place on 5 & 6 November 2015 in Lisbon, Portugal. The group was comprised of representatives from 11 European National Agencies (Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal, England, Czech Republic, Finland, Lithuania, Northern Ireland, Slovenia and Turkey). During the meeting, the experts shared details on their current work, significant projects in which they are engaged and challenges that they face, explored the topic of Public Private Partnership and prison architecture and decided on the next steps of the Expert Group.
Download the Real Estate/Logistics Expert Group Meeting Notes.