On 26 June 2024, the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX) concluded the last of three training sessions on dynamic security and its core elements targeting Kosovo Correctional Service’s Correctional Officers.

Dynamic security emphasizes the need for correctional officers to develop positive relationship building with prisoners, fair treatment and to enhance a sense of well-being among prisoners. It also facilitates constructive change while prisoners are engaged in purposeful activities that contribute to their future reintegration in the society.   

The training, which was a part of the Mission’s small-scale project “Increasing the level of Dynamic Security in the Kosovo Correctional Service (KCS),” was delivered by the EULEX Correctional Unit with the ultimate aim of contributing to a safe and rehabilitative environment for all incarcerated persons. The project was also designed to elevate the level of professionalism of KCS’s correctional officers in the spheres of dynamic security, risk and need assessments and treatment of prisoners in general.

Overall, the three sessions, which have been held between February and June, reached 137 Kosovo Correctional Service’s Officers and tackled issues such as: the significance of having good and professional relationships between prisoners and staff; a safe and rehabilitative prison environment; the purpose of the Prisoners’ Assessment and Classification Unit; the role of correctional staff in implementing sentence plans based on individual assessments and best practices on dynamic security.

The EULEX’s Correctional Advisor, Heidi Susanna Kajander, explained that, when actively used, dynamic security acts both as preventative security mechanism and as rehabilitative mechanism through dialogical interaction between staff and prisoners. “This project has contributed to support the KCS by enhancing the correctional officers’ understanding of the key elements of dynamic security, with a specific focus on how dynamic security affects the security level of a correctional institution, and why dynamic security is relevant when aiming to improve the level of treatment and rehabilitation of prisoners,” further explained Kajander.

Following the first session organized in February 2024, participants had three months to analyze and observe how core dynamic security elements are being utilized in their respective institutions in order to subsequently draft tailored development plans addressing questions such as: which are the dynamic security elements that are actively used in the trainees’ respective prisons; how the active use of dynamic security elements impacts the daily prison work; how the use of dynamic security elements can be introduced, strengthened or increased in correctional institutions.

The developments plans are expected to be implemented in the future, thus fostering a safe and rehabilitative prison environment.