25 September 2019
From 2 to 6 September, EULEX, in cooperation with an EU Twinning Project, organised a training workshop on assessment of prisoners for a group of future trainers of the Kosovo Correctional Service (KCS) Assessment Unit.
The training workshop, delivered by Finnish experts Annamari Räisänen and Sanna Riila, aimed to increase the knowledge and develop the training skills of those KCS staff members who will be employed in the assessment unit once it is officially established. The assessment unit is expected to ensure a better rehabilitation, resocialization, and integration of prisoners back into their communities and society through adequately assessing the risks and their needs and through creating individual sentence plans.
Dashnim Osmani, Head of the Pilot Project of the Unit for Assessment and Classification of Prisoners, thanked EULEX for its continued support and noted: “This training workshop was very useful for us because we enhanced our knowledge on how to evaluate and guide the prisoners towards development programmes that correspond to their skills and needs.”
Ritva Hannele Vahakoski, Head of EULEX’s Correctional Unit, explained the importance of training Kosovo professionals on methods on risk and needs assessment of prisoners, adding that those assessments will directly contribute to the sustainable improvement of KCS. “EULEX’s Correctional Unit continues to support KCS in implementing the Risk – Need – Responsivity theory in line with best European practices,” said Vahakoski.
Project Manager and EULEX Correctional Advisor Sofie Lenaerts stressed that the training workshop was only the first part of the project, and added: “The overall training course also envisages a study visit to the Correctional Service in Finland, and a week-long training in Pristina.”
The trained KCS personnel will be responsible for the future training of KCS staff in risk and needs assessment, as well as in sentence planning.