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"ALTERNATIVES TO PRE-TRIAL DETENTIONSummary of the replies to a questionnaire on the “use of pre-trial detention” in EU member States”

Overuse of imprisonment 
The question of imprisonment is complex, as prison population continually rises both in the Council of Europe member States and globally. Prison overcrowding is therefore a very real and present issue. The overuse of imprisonment and its detrimental impact on criminal justice systems, individuals and societies, has led EU member states countries to implement alternative policies, alternatives to pre-trial detention, at the very early stages of the criminal justice process.

Emergency measures 
In 2020 the world has been affected by the pandemic of Covid-19 which had a huge impact on the criminal justice systems, both prison and probation. As mentioned in the document of the PC-CP Working Group of the Council of Europe, “during Covid-19 pandemic times, a number of countries have introduced emergency measures aimed at decreasing prison numbers and reducing prison overcrowding like: reducing as much as possible the number of accused or sentenced persons sent to detention centres and prisons, releasing certain categories of prisoners (vulnerable prisoners due to their age or stage of health), juveniles, pregnant women or women with infant children, prisoners planned to be released in the near future or low risk offenders”. This criminal justice policy implemented in different countries might or could also be used for pre-trial detainees.

Pre-trial detention alternatives 
Alternatives to pre-trial detention have been, explicitly or implicitly, on CEP’s and EU’s agenda for several years and in many contexts, but now with the impact of Covid-19 in all criminal justice systems, it has become a much more present and crucial issue to discuss and important to implement since prisons might be(come) niduses of infections. Alternative measures to detention promote social rehabilitation and reintegration of the offenders, which is one of the key aims for using such measures. These alternative measures have also several other benefits, like contributing to reduce prisons overcrowding and promoting public security, the latter particularly through the reduction of reoffending.

EU member states 
With this in mind, the Confederation of European Probation wished to explore the extent to which alternatives to pre-trial detention are used in the different EU member states, what was/is the impact of Covid-19 in the use of these alternatives, and what CEP or the EU could do to promote a more frequent use of these alternative measures to pre-trial detention.

Questionnaire 
The Confederation of European Probation sent out a questionnaire with five questions to 38 EU member states jurisdictions. A total of 19 replies was received from the following jurisdictions: Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Belgium (Wallonia), Catalonia, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Luxemburg, Malta, Sweden, United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Moldova , Turkey and Ukraine.

 

 

TO THE SUMMARY

 


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