Supported by Open Society Foundations (2015 -2016)
During September – November 2015, ARCT was engaged in the finalization of the Assessment Study, dedicated to factors of recidivism and its impact in the pre-trial detention. The team comprised of legal, social and psychological background was engaged through desk and field work in identifying the factors of recidivism, the number of cases, other related factors which impact the families and communities, the prison system and judiciary.ARCT Key fact findings:(1) Actual crisis in management of current imprisonment policies:In the face of rising crime rates and –as a consequence - increasing numbers of offenders adjudicated and sentenced, the Albanian criminal justice system should pay special attention to cost-benefit solutions, non-custodial responses to crime other than the summary fine and non-prosecution policies based on conditional or unconditional discharges.Prison sentences and imprisonment place a heavy financial burden on the state and do not seem to meet promises such as being an effective deterrent to crime or reducing recidivism.Crime and punishment policies relying on imprisonment come with enormous costs for the annual state budget and for civil society, which has to deal with problems resulting from the impact of imprisonment on families and those communities and neighborhoods which have to reintegrate large numbers of (young and male) ex-convicts.Imprisonment is of course the least elastic penal sanction which places prisons under strict uneasy rules to adjust regulations and policies to adapt with the number of offenders convicted and sentenced. The prison annual budget is basically spent on human resources, supplies and administration rather than redirected to strategic interventions to address increasing numbers of recidivism.(2) Prisons perceived as “schools of crimes”:
