MOBilizing Society Towards (ex) Offenders Reintegration

"The MOBi project is a partnership of eight organizations present in five different EU countries. The project is led by CENTRUL PENTRU PROMOVAREA INVATARII PERMANENTE-CPIP and aimed to:•Understand the European contemporary punishment and reintegration picture in terms of society's perception, participation, offenders labelling, return to work or to community, building an assessment tool to measure society ‘culture’ towards punishment and reintegration•To create new, innovative and multidisciplinary approaches to respond to (ex)offenders’ reintegration process•To develop a community engagement methodology to support Criminal Justice System (CJS) organisations, practitioners, and closest stakeholders’ efforts on reinforcing existent community (society) based approaches•To design one transnational training programme, to be executed by key-organisations, aimed at civil society, to ensure that all citizens have access to knowledge of the rehabilitation model at work in their own criminal justice system, and are therefore able to review their own, individual role in the reintegration process•To deliver a Handbook, to support different organisations from Public, Private and Third Sector developing their social responsibility and participation on CJS and offender’s reintegration.The eight organizations partners are Genepi (France), Bremen Senate of Justice and Constitution and Hoppenbank e.V. (Germany), Associazione Antigone (Italy), Direção-Geral de Reinserção e Serviços Prisionais and Aproximar, Cooperativa de Solidariedade Social (Portugal), Center for Promoting Lifelong Learning - CPIP and The Baia Mare Penitentiary (Romania). During the project partners have been developing a set of Intellectual Outputs (IO), namely: IO1: Assessment Tool to screen society’s perceptions on (ex) offenders needs and CJS functionIO2: Assessment Tool to screen offender’s perceptions on society acceptance regarding reintegration processIO3: Methodology on Community engagement in CJSIO4: Training course on community awareness on CJS, (ex)offenders’ rehabilitation & reintegration processesO5: Handbook on community awareness of (ex)offenders’ rehabilitation & reintegration processes. The MOBI process and way of work was to ensure that this package of assessment, methodology and training can and will be replicated in any European Union country with the intended purpose of up-scaling to public policy recommendation and raising awareness of (ex)offenders’ rehabilitation and reintegration processes. It’s destined to civil society organizations in general in order to put their values on action to enhance (ex)offenders’ reintegration process.One of the expected results MOBI has attained is a civil society more informed about prison services operation, different offender populations and strategies to actively participate on offenders’ social reintegration, with special focus on employment issues. Thus, our MOBI results were used by workers and trainers linked to Prison Services who intend to developed key-competences to transmit how the services work, who are the clients, what are their needs, etc. as well as by organizations from Public, Private and Third Sector developing their social responsibility and participation on Criminal Justice System and offender’s reintegration. In this sense, MOBi project was conceived to respond to an evolving need, namely the social inclusion of (ex) offenders and the creation of a collaborative context whereas both prison and community engage into a ""co-working"" mindset focus on making reintegration a lifelong learning process for both offenders and civil society. The project proposes an innovative integrated approach in order to diminish the distance existing between society, in general, and the Criminal Justice System by using the tools of adult education."