Interagency Cooperation Workshop

 “PIS D’ACOLLIDA” Interangency Cooperation experiencie for reintegration of inmates in situation of social exclusion.

                At November of 2019, the Confederation of European Probation (CEP) and EuroPris together organised a workshop on the interagency cooperation between prisons, probation services and municipalities, when preparing offenders for their return to society.

The experience we presented was the result of a process of awareness-raising about the specific need to offer a path of social inclusion in the return from prison to society in a very special way for people in situations of exclusion.

It is a dynamic experience of more than 15 years where the different actors involved have progressively taken sides: the local Prison, the local administration (Consell de Mallorca), and our Entity, an NGO entity that for its aims and vocation has led this process.

We want to highlight the fact that the Local Administration, has assumed as its own and specific responsibility to offer as a service itself a plan of reception and specific inclusion for ex-prisoner population.

The project began in January 2004, and It is an innovative project in terms of its design, since it includes the inmates as active participants.It is innovative in terms of dignifying and respecting the fundamental rights of its participants, providing  them with a space for coexistence that meets current standards of comfort and normalcy. It is innovative in terms of social inclusion, since in addition to providing an efficient platform to its participants for their probation process, is integrated into the neighbourhood as part of it, opening our facilities for community uses (popular festivals, training activities, meeting spaces, etc.).It is innovative in terms of its philosophy of work, putting the emphasis on the participant and focusing the methodology on three fundamental axes: Empowerment, Resilience and Prevention of harmful behaviours. The «PIS D’ACOLLIDA» project has had a very positive impact on inmates on parole at a double level:  first because, due to the Spanish legal system, the participants would not have been able to get parole were it not for the existence of the Project. Second, because of the following aptitudes that the inmates have learned during their stay:  – Capacity to live autonomously, avoiding recidivism in criminal behaviors and minimizing the inertia of dependency and institutionalization.- Ability to tolerate frustration, providing personal tools to overcome the difficulties and challenges of daily life.- Competence to recognize their own limits and ask for help as an strategy to avoid relapsing into criminal behavior. Finally, we want to highlight the impact that the  «PIS D’ACOLLIDA» has in the political context of our community. Due to its trajectory, since 2013 our project has been fully integrated and financed by the Local Government. This fact has an enormous impact on the social inclusion policy since it considers paroled or discharged inmates as a political responsibility of the Local Government. This fact recognizes the task carried out during the past 15 years and guarantees its sustainability over time.