During her visit to Banja Luka, the U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Maureen Cormack, paid a visit to one of the drafting sessions of the working group formed under the auspices of the European Union and Council of Europe Horizontal Facility for Western Balkans and Turkey project in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) “Enhancing human rights protection for detained and sentenced persons”. The working group is formed of prison staff training team members working across prison jurisdictions to further harmonise operational procedures in BiH prisons with Council of Europe standards and best European practices.

The team, comprising prison professionals from the three BiH prison systems, is accredited to deliver training for prison staff designed within the series of related projects implemented by the Council of Europe. At the moment, they are developing a comprehensive handbook on offenders’ treatment programmes, aiming to ensure exercise of a range of purposeful activities and offenders’ management programmes in BiH prisons as a response to recommendations of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) to BiH authorities.  

Ambassador Cormack was also interested to hear more about the follow up given under the current project to the competence-based training framework for the basic grade prison staff and managers, which was originally designed under a  previous US-funded project implemented by the Council of Europe in BiH in the period 2012-2016.

The current activities on prison reform in BiH strive to further improve treatment of prisoners across jurisdictions and standardise procedures for implementation of their individual sentence plans in compliance with Council of Europe recommendations and standards.