1
0
On May 29, the Penitentiary Academy of Ukraine became the intellectual center of attention for the scientific and professional community in the field of criminal justice. It was here that the professional scientific conference “The Modern Penitentiary System: Challenges and Solutions in the Context of Armed Conflict” was held, organized by the Research Center for Criminal Justice and Penitentiary Issues of the PAU.
The conference was held in a mixed format and was attended by over 320 participants from all regions of Ukraine, as well as experts from more than 10 countries. Among the participants were scientists, representatives of Ukrainian and international public organizations, and specialists with practical experience: employees of penitentiary institutions, probation services, and human rights defenders.
🔍 The conference program covered four key areas:
“Resocialization and correctional work with convicts. Probation”
- Effective models for the resocialization of persons serving sentences, approaches to individualized correctional work, and modern probation practices, both before and after release, were discussed.
“Prison security and prisoners’ rights”
- Issues of human rights in places of detention, responding to security challenges in armed conflict, and mechanisms for monitoring and ensuring decent treatment were raised.
“Prison system management: Ukrainian and foreign experience”
- Modern models of prison management were presented, in particular using examples from EU countries. The possibilities for adapting them to Ukrainian conditions during the war and post-war reconstruction were discussed.
“Criminal and penitentiary policy”
- The discussion focused on contemporary views of the goals of state criminal policy, the priorities of reforms, and the mechanisms for their implementation in wartime.
🎙️ Over 30 speakers shared their analysis, practical cases, strategies for improving the modern penitentiary system, and real tools that can be implemented in the Ukrainian context.
Among the key topics of the conference were:
🔹 Approaches to the resocialization of prisoners in Sweden, presented by Eva-Lena Gjalmarson, an expert on penitentiary systems at the EU Advisory Mission in Ukraine (EUAM-Ukraine). Her presentation highlighted the importance of personalized support for prisoners and interagency cooperation in the process of reintegration into society.
🔹 Analysis of prison hierarchies and informal structures in the penitentiary system, presented by Dmytro Yagunov, member of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT, Council of Europe).
🔹 Digitalization of the prison space, presented by Pedro das Neves, Director General of IPS (Portugal), as one of the key areas of modernization of penal institutions in the 21st century.
🔹 Post-penitentiary support for released prisoners, presented by Olena Sokalskaya, Senior Research Fellow, who outlined the need for a systematic approach to reintegration as a means of preventing recidivism and a step towards social security.
