In September 2015, EuroPris hosted the second of the 2015 expert working groups on EC Framework Decision 2008/909/JHA. The first meeting was held on 6/7 July in Brussels and was attended by representatives from 13 countries. This second meeting took place in The Hague and was attended by participants from a further 11 countries. At the end of September 2015, 25 Member States had implemented the Framework Decision 909.

For the 2015 expert group meetings, EuroPris invited experts from countries that are members of EuroPris, as well as non-member countries so to broaden the discussion between Member States. This enabled experts from countries who have recently implemented, the opportunity to meet and discuss prisoner transfers with their counterparts who have experience of using the Framework Decision – some of whom had attended previous working groups.

The agenda was the same as for the July meeting and discussions ranged from completion of the certificate to practical transfer arrangements, prison conditions and legal challenges. Given the close alignment between STEPS2 Resettlement and the discussion points for the expert group, representatives were invited to update on the progress of development of the Offender Handbook, Victims Issues and Data Transfer elements of the project. Olga de Vries presented the e-learning to 9 participants prior to the meeting, and gained valuable feedback on the e-learning programme that has been developed as a training tool for practitioners on the transfer process.

Following a presentation by Wendy de Bondt from Ghent University, the experts engaged in a detailed conversation regarding data exchanges between competent authorities. This provided useful insights for the project staff on the use of transferring information relevant to risk and information necessary for the transfer. As an aide, experts also agreed to utilise the Prisoner Information Document, developed by EuroPris to consider information needed for the practical transfer arrangements.

The experts also gave valuable feedback to the work led by NOMS for information documents that are being developed for prisoners, to inform them of the transfer process.

With agreement from the experts, EuroPris are going to collate statistics on the use of the Framework Decision and numbers of EU national prisoners held in each Member State. This is the first time this information will be centrally gathered and will be useful for facilitating further discussions on the process and identifying working relationships between the Member States who have high proportions of foreign national prisoners.

Click here to read the final report of the 2015 expert group meetings.