Strengthening social cohesion by crime prevention and reintegration programmes

Preferential Project within the framework of Operational Programmes of New Hungary Development Plan (TAMOP 5.6.2.)

The project is founded by the European Union European Social Found, through the Hungarian National Development Agency as a managing authority. The implementer of the project is the Ministry of Justice and Law-Enforcement. The overall budget of the project is 2.2 billion HUF (8.1 million EUR).

The project is divided into two phases:
April 2008 – March 2009: Planning and preparation
April 2009 – December 2010: Implementation

The feasibility study for the first phase has been submitted to the managing authority (30. March 2008.)

The professional fundament of the project is to support and promote the ongoing process of comprehensive criminal policy reform, has been under way since 2003. It is essential to realize that different instruments should be used in case of petty crimes, representing the overwhelming majority of cases on one hand and severe offences threatening the community on the other. This is called the "double track criminal policy". The optimal operation of the system requires proper network built up among the relevant professional stakeholders, sharing and disseminating information on a regular and structured basis. This latter is called "the signaling system".

The area of operation restricted to three (out of the seven) regions of Hungary. Figures indicate that those ones are responsible for most of the "crime emission".

The project is based on three pillars:

• youth at risk ("moral danger zone");
• victim protection and support;
• offender reintegration (both with custodial and non-custodial sentences).

The first target group includes professionals working on the fields of childcare, public education, healthcare, criminal justice system, belonging to either to the central or local government or NGO-s. The other target group consists of clients of all aforementioned services.

Respected experts of the field are going to develop a training material, summing up and structuring the theoretical as well as practical knowledge containing necessary information from the perspective of restorative justice and community based crime prevention. It will serve as a tool enhancing knowledge, widening the scope of professionals on the field, and also embed the essential elements of the new criminal policy.

Working groups of professionals will be set up in order to work out strategies for implementing policies in practice, improving the signaling system and developing concept of operations for model projects. By stressing active participation this form also promotes networking among the professional elements.

Training of conflict management, especially mediation and conferencing have a special emphasis in the project. The methodology of these is well applicable in many areas of the work with clients and may give an impetus to the professional development.

Roughly two-third of the budget is devoted to develop model projects directly address clients. These projects are meant to interlink interventions characteristically separated so far. That provides an opportunity to design an integrated system of deliberate, coherent, and structured actions to optimize the utilization of available sources and achieve the best outcome. The programme targets to apply these models as best practices, could be implemented on a national scale in the future.