Studying the needs of incarcerated persons and people working in two new prisons in Belgium

Description

In 2022 and 203, Belgium opened two new prisons in Haren and Dendermonde. These new penitentiaries introduce new operating principles such as digital platforms, new tasks for prison staff, scaling-up, and new public-private partnerships. This creates new opportunities, but working and living in these new institutions also create specific needs. To get a clear idea of the needs of both groups in the new prisons, our Participatory Action Research method (PAR) takes the voices of the incarcerated persons and staff from aid providers into account. After having identified their needs, experiments will be set up.

This paper presents the participatory way of conducting this research, with reflection on the involvement of all stakeholders in every phase of the research, the challenges we encounter to include a variety of partners and the lessons that can be learned. Finally, we discuss how PAR can empower incarcerated participants to achieve change.

Periode	8 sep 2023
Evenementstitel	Eurocrim 2023: 23rd Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology
Evenementstype	Conference
Locatie	Florence, Italy
Mate van erkenning	International