Rationale

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In Finland, the amount of criminality has risen within the past decades. The Finnish population has been rising rapidly. Also, the amount of inmates has risen mainly because of narcotic criminality and foreign inmates but also due to the change in legal criminal procedures. The annual average of inmates was 3434 in 2002 and the relative inmate population was 60 / 100 000 inhabitants.Finnish criminal policy is very protective and preventive against imprisonment concerning young offenders. The basis of Finnish society related to correctional measures with children and young people is more social work centred than based on detention. The penal responsibility limit is 15 years of age. By definition a young offender is a person who has been between 15 and 20 years when committing a crime. An unconditional prison sentence is passed on youth only for a weighty reason. Young age is always a mitigating reason. Young offenders will only serve 1/3 of their sentence in prison. The proportion of young offenders in Finnish prisons is rather low, 4 % of all prisoners.Prisons have made initiatives in for instance to found wards with to intoxicant use. Without pathways to normal life outside the prison, all previous work is endangered. Prison Service works together with the Probation Service and other authorities, to help the prisoners to reintegrate into society. The Probation Service organises information events concerning supervision in prisons. Supervision is a good way to find new ways to sosialisation and to get support. All the juvenile prisoners to be released are ordered to supervision, those prisoners who’s remaining sentence is 1 ½ years or longer and those prisoners asking for supervision, are ordered to supervision. The Probation Service is in charge of organising the supervision. Release is prepared together with prison staff, probation service staff and other co-operation partners.

Objective

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PoMo is a regional DP aimed at young criminals ja inmates being released from prison in the Kainuu area. Objective is also to improve the labour market situation of unemployed adults able to function as their mentor. The target groups are young released prisoners aged 18 to 35 capable to work and young people aged 15 to 21 convicted of crimes. Programmes to be developed are based on previous experiences of work with young offenders and youth at the risk of marginalisation. The present work is concentrating on developing those pilot programmesThe objectives are: - to provide comprehensive support for young people's life - to reduce substance abuse and recidivism - to to increase the training motivation of participants and thus improve their labour market position through commitment to training and work - to create an individual rehabilitation plan for each participant worth the term of imprisonment as well as the period being released.

Innovation

Budget Action 2

1 500 000 – 2 000 000 €

Beneficiaries

Empowerment

 With beneficiaries

 Between national partners

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POMO-project is developing the models of combining the strengths of different practitioners into a mainstream practise, which meets the needs of an individual beneficiary. Therefore Youth RiSe is organised as a Development Partnership (DP), which means that all relevant actors are gathered together to tackle the common challenge of supporting re-offenders. The managing organisation is the Probation Service District Office in Kajaani City. Key actors of DP consist of municipalities, police departments, district courts, rehabilitation authorities, prisons and representatives of youth and educational sectors in the operational area. The project workers are working within and inside a network of supporting authorities and practitioners. The Development Partnership is committed working to achieve the goals of improving the integration process from prison back to society.The cooperation and the division of tasks between the Probation and Prison Services are rather clear. Like their statutory mandates require the Prison Service is responsible of enforcement of the prison sentences and Probation Service takes care of the supervision. And thus the tasks are divided by in/out-basis. But the quality of making the sentence plans and the releasing plan requires intensive communication and expert knowledge between practitioners. DPs’ vision is that one day in future we will have specialised staff for inducting, enforcing and releasing the inmates inside the prison and in addition to have a special measures outside for taking care of the resettlement.

Transnationality

 Linguistic skills

• suomi
• English
• svenska
• español (castellano)

 Percentage of the budget for transnational activities

• 15.0%

 Transnational Co-operation Partnerships

Background

 Involvment in previous EU programmes

• One partner involved in A&E

National Partners

Agreement Summary

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POMO-project is part of the transnational NEW Horizons-partnership. The partners to the TCA have a common and genuine interest to develop and improve methods and systems within prisons and the community to improve employability for (ex)-offenders. All partners recognise that working in partnership provides a greater opportunity to holistic approaches to employability in ways that unite, empower and produce synergy in and between the custodial and community elements of a prison sentence focussed on the employment of (ex)-offenders. All partners recognise the complexity of enhancing employment chances for (ex)-offenders and the necessity of developing innovative and holistic solutions to the barriers to employment. The trans-national partnership is therefore committed to a wide range of approaches that embrace employers, business people, institutions and other structural impediments in the process of achieving effective resettlement that includes employment for (ex)-offenders.Transnational co-operation brings added value in developing models. This is mainly done by exchanging experiences and information especially concerning parnership network and the models combining two generations. Transnational partners gain the Finnish expertice in the field of criminal sanction. The DP expects to import knowledge of structural mentoring. Transnational partnership includes DP employee training, mentor training and transnational job rotation.

Probation Sevice

Contact person(s)

Path with own mentor