Today prisons are increasingly multi-ethnic environments. The cultural and ethnic diversity of inmates pose multiple challenges to front-line prison staff, who have to cope with cultures and languages unknown, “sub-culture” phenomena and possible episodes of radicalization and extremism.

The management of multi-cultural aspects in prison facilities is a priority issue in the EU legislation, as highlighted by the Recommendation CM/Rec(2012)12 of the Committee of Ministers, which calls for the need to provide prison staff with proper training to deal with foreign prisoners’ needs and rights.

In this framework, the 2-year project B-COMPETENT. Boosting competences in Penitentiary Staff in Europe aims to contribute to an effective and coherent application of EU laws and standards on the treatment of foreign prisoners by designing and implementing a train-the-trainers program (face-to-face and e-learning), combined with best practices sharing, awareness-raising actions and practical multilingual tools.

· Detection of training gaps and needs among civilian prison staff regarding EU laws and standards on human rights protection in correctional contexts;

· Good practices related to the enhancement of human rights protection in prisons identified and disseminated in the countries involved in the project and at the EU level;

· Trainers of prison staff properly equipped with a set of multidisciplinary skills necessary to provide proper training to the front-line prison staff;

· Front-line civilian prison staff more aware of EU laws on foreign inmates’ human rights and equipped with juridical and practical competencies necessary to deal with cultural diversity-related issues;

· Enhanced harmonization and standardization of civilian prison staff training standards on human rights among EU countries and the 2 targeted pre-accession countries (Albania and Montenegro).

The project, co-funded by the European Union’s Justice Programme (2014-2020) will be implemented by a Consortium of 7 inter-sectoral partners: