Abstract
The issue of migration is attracting significant media and political attention in Europe. Migration has been one of the causes of the rapid rise in the number and proportion of foreigners in national prisons. In response to this problem, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers in 2012 adopted a recommendation concerning the treatment of foreign prisoners. This article analyses the penological and human rights implications of this recommendation in relation to its objectives to reduce the number of foreigners in custody, improve the regime experienced by foreign offenders and enhance the prospects for their successful reintegration. While the 2012 Recommendation makes important contributions to regional penal policy, it also contains notable gaps and limitations. The paper discusses the significance of omissions in relation to the (potential) role of consular representatives, dealing with nationals detained abroad and the use of inter-state transfers. Despite these criticisms and political resistance to some proposals in this field, there appears to be wide spread support for the Recommendation at a practitioner level. It may also have significance beyond domestic policy. There is a new and growing sub-category of foreign prisoner in Europe: the international prisoners convicted by international criminal courts that are serving their sentences in the prison systems of cooperating States. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential influence regional penal policy can have on the implementation of international custodial sanctions.
Highlights
While political and media attention is very much focused on the reduction or prevention of migration into Europe, regional law has recently had to address the penal consequence of the movement of people across international borders: a growing population of foreign prisoners
The article concludes with some thoughts on the potential of the 2012 Recommendation to impact upon a distinct subgroup of foreign prisoners: persons convicted and sentenced by international criminal courts that are serving their sentences in domestic prisons
This represents a slight increase from 21% in 2012 – see Table 4 ‘Foreign Inmates on 1st September 2012’ SPACE I Statistics, Penological Cooperation (PC-CP)(2014) 5, 29
Summary
While political and media attention is very much focused on the reduction or prevention of migration into Europe, regional law has recently had to address the penal consequence of the movement of people across international borders: a growing population of foreign prisoners. Through an improvement in prison conditions and the treatment of foreigners’.1. In 2012, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers adopted a new Recommendation concerning foreign prisoners. This paper analyses this Recommendation in light of its reductionist, regime improvement and reintegration objectives and assesses the contribution it makes to regional soft law and policy. The evolution of soft law in this field and the political realities associated with drafting soft law at the regional law are highlighted throughout the paper. The article concludes with some thoughts on the potential of the 2012 Recommendation to impact upon a distinct subgroup of foreign prisoners: persons convicted and sentenced by international criminal courts that are serving their sentences in domestic prisons
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