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The transfer of sentenced persons in Europe

Much ado about reintegration

Ghent University, Belguim

Tom Vander Beken

Ghent University, Belguim

Gert Vermeulen

Ghent University, Belguim

In recent years new instruments have been developed in Europe that allow sentenced persons to be transferred to their country of nationality/origin or permanent residence, where the sentence is then carried out. The most commonly referred to ratio legis for these regulations is the reintegration or rehabilitation of offenders. But is the optimization of offender reintegration really the objective and the result of these transfers? Reintegration features in many theories on the goals of punishment, and since Martinson proclaimed in the 1970s that `Nothing Works' a steady flow of publications has demonstrated that there are interventions that can reintegrate offenders successfully. The theoretical and empirical framework of rehabilitation is well developed, and it is therefore possible to explore which components of reintegration feature in regulations surrounding the transfer of prisoners. Rehabilitation can be divided in a number of components: orientation towards change, room for subjectivity in decisions on the length and type of sanction, the subsidiarity of the prison sentence, and attention to societal bonds. A critical evaluation of the intended goals of the transfer instruments in terms of whether they are reflected in the policies' implementation and application finds that some of these components appear to be present in the regulations, to some extent, but others are completely absent. Therefore the actual impact of transfer regulations may not be what the legislators intended.

Key Words: Council of Europe • European Union International execution of sentences • reintegration • transfer of sentenced persons

Punishment & Society, Vol. 11, No. 1, 111-128 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1462474508098135


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