Four seminars

This Summer Course includes four parallel seminars (Wednesday 8 July, 16:30-17:30). Three of the seminars will be conducted by the leaders of the three parallel workshops and will give an impression of the main issues that the three sectors – prison, probation, restorative justice – are dealing with when it comes to sexual violence. The fourth seminar will be provided by the Catalonian Prison Service presenting information about its sex offenders intervention model and the implementation of the Circles of Support and Accountability programme in Catalonia.

Note: during registrations, participants will be asked to indicate their 1st and 2nd most preferred options; depending on the number of persons registered for a seminar, they may be allocated to the second chosen option.

 1 - Prison and sexual violence with Marianne Fuglestved and Nicholas Blagden

 2 - Probation and sexual violence with Kieran McCartan and Hanna Lena Merdian

 3 - Restorative justice and sexual violence with Vincent Mercer and Kristel Buntinx

 4 - The sex offenders’ intervention model in the Catalan Prison System and the Circles of Support and Accountability programme with Carlos Soler, Deputy Director General of Rehabilitation and Health Programmes, Secretariat of Criminal Sanctions, Rehabilitation and Victim Support, Ministry of Justice

The aim of this seminar is to present the framework and practice of the intervention with sex offenders at the Prison Services of Catalonia and to discuss with the participants the main traits that a comprehensive model of treatment, reintegration and reoffending prevention should include. In Catalonian prisons, the first sex offenders’ treatment program started in 1995 in two prisons. Since then, many important developments have taken place: the extension of the treatment to all ordinary prisons, the evaluation of the program’s effectiveness, applied research in the context of Catalonian population has been conducted as well as the revision and improvement of the structure and contents of the treatment program. The implementation of the Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA) program is one of the results of such revision and improvement. Moreover, some elements of the prison system, such as the open regime or risk assessment, have been relevant to develop a comprehensive intervention and to the risk management of this special group of offenders. As part of the seminar, participants will be aware of the key elements for an effective management of sex offenders within the context of Catalan prison services and probation and will learn about the implementation specificities of the CoSA programme in a local community.