Project Partners

Name of the organisation:	The Prison of Tallinn
Address:	Magasini 35, 10138 Tallinn, Estonia
Tel:	+372 612 7530
Fax:
Web site:	http://www.vangla.ee/43636

Name of the contact person:	Laura Kikas
Function:	Deputy governor
Tel:	+372 612 7631
Fax:
E-mail:	[email protected]

Name of the contact person:	Katriin Savitš
Function:	Supervisor-senior probation officer
Tel:	+372 612 7867
Fax:
E-mail:	[email protected]

Name of the contact person:	Kaarel Kraus
Function:	Contact person
Tel:	+372 612 7621
Fax:
E-mail:	[email protected]

Name of the contact person:	Pille Tunger
Function:	Assistant to the director of prison
Tel:	+372 612 7523
Fax:
E-mail:	[email protected]

Type of organisation:

Public Authority

Fields of action:

Public Authorities

DESCRIPTION
OF THE ORGANISATION

The Department of Prisons in the Ministry of Justice is the administrative management unit of the prison system with its principal duty of managing, enhancing and supervising work in prisons. Tallinn Prison, as other three prisons in Estonia, is directly supervised by the department.

Tallinn Prison is a regional prison, which serves the northern and western part of Estonia. Tallinn Prison is currently the largest prison in Estonia and is located in the city of Tallinn on the site of the former prisoner-of-war camp that operated between 1944 and 1949 and renovated afterwards. The history of prison starts from 1919 and this year 93rd anniversary was celebrated. Preparations are currently being made for the construction of a new Tallinn Prison.

In the structure of Tallinn prison are, since 2008 emerging process, two probation departments supervising round 3500 probationers, which is approximately half of the total number of probationers in Estonia. Probation officers are dealing with implementation of wide palette of community sanctions and measures from pre-sentence reports to parole orders.

Prison is managed by a director who is appointed to the position for five years term by the Minister of Justice. There are 600 workers in Tallinn prison (of whom 372 are prison officers and round 100 probation officers) are active in 14 departments of the prison. There are on every day basis round 1190 inmates serving their sentence in the prison, round 450 of whom are remand prisoners. Inmates can obtain basic and secondary education, and learn the trades of woodwork, construction, electrical maintenance and gardening. Inmates work in the prison’s kitchen and laundry, carry out repairs and renovation work and are employed in other workshops.

More can be found: http://www.vangla.ee/43636-

EXPERIENCE IN PREVIOUS PROJECTS

The Estonian Penitentiary Service and Tallinn prison as a great part of it, has been involved in various projects similar to current announcement. A few to mention are listed as follows:

“Exchange of information and best practices in the work with foreign inmates” no. JUST/2010/JPEN/AG/ 1565.Project period is from 2012 til 2013 and is initiated by Latvian partner and involves Lithuanian authorities.
EU Criminal Justice programme, support for improving the database of convicted offenders JUST/2009/JPEN/ AG/0613. European Union support is 422 251€. Project is implemented since 2011 February and lasts until January 2013
“Strenghtening of the Estonian Prison system” under Norwegian financial mechanism. Project aimed at training of prison staff and improve the skills of young prisoners through improved vocational training. Project support was 712 672 €, from which 605 771 € from donor and 106 900€ as co-funding. Project was implemented from November 2007 to march 2010
Phare twinning light project (EE04 -1BTWP -JH -01) “Strengthening the Estonian probation system”. Project was aimed at improvement of the crime prevention effectiveness by strengthening the probation work with offenders through te use of new methodology and rehabilitation programmes.
Phare twinning project (ES 98/1B/JH/01) “ Strenghtening the Justice system of Estonia”. Project was aimed at judge, prosecutors and probation officers. In case of probation officers the aim was exchange of theoretical knowledge for probation work through workshops and study-visit to Germany. Main topic was community service and its implementation

In addition to aforementioned projects the Prison Service has a wide and active network of cooperation with several partners across Europe. There have been various ad hoc projects with own funding starting from trainings and visits and ending with introduction of new working methods (social rehabilitation programmes, risk-assessment tool etc).

EXPERIENCE AND EXPERTISE OF THE ORGANIZATION IN THE PROJECT’S SUBJECT AREA

Tallinn prison is the biggest regional prison in Estonia, which serves approximately a half of the Estonian territory in terms of implementation of custodial and non-custodial sentences.

During past twenty years the Estonian prisons have went through enormous changes, which nowadays has resulted with introduction of modern practices in terms of rehabilitation and risk-management of offenders and high standards of carrying out everyday duties.

There are round 600 workers with different background and expertise available in the organisation, which contributes to the project delivery. Many of the workers and also from a project team have participated in the international cooperation projects and are experts of their field locally.

CONTRIBUTIONS THAT CAN BE PROVIDED TO THE PROJECT

Partners representatives participate in the preparation and implementation of the project as follows:

Organisation of one workshop in Estonia
Participation in workshops throughout the lifetime of the project
Exchange of experiences and knowledge
Project reporting
Preparation and printing of publications, dissemination of results
Translation of workshop findings from English to Estonian