Prison of Tallin
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: / Rait Kuuse /
Function: / Director
Tel: / +372 612 7530; +372 53 030 129
Fax:
E-mail: /
Type of organisation
SME School University Public Authority X
Training No Profit NGO
Other (Specify):
Fields of action
SMEs £ Youth £ Universities £ Public Authorities X
Equal opportunities £ Schools £ Unemployed £
Other (Specify)
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:
1. “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.
2. 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
3. “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
4. 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.
5. 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
The 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:
1. Organisation of one workshop in Estonia
2. Participation in workshops throughout the lifetime of the project
3. Exchange of experiences and knowledge
4. Project reporting
5. Preparation and printing of publications, dissemination of results
6. Translation of workshop findings from English to Estonian
Contact Person’s Experience and Expertise
The director of Tallinn Prison Mr. Kuuse has been working for the criminal justice sector over thirteen years. His career began in the year of 1999 as probation officer and continued prior his appointment within the service and also abroad.
Mr. Kuuse has several years of experience in the Estonian Ministry of Justice where he held various positions such as Head of the Social Rehabilitation Division (Department of Prisons) and Head of the Probation Division (Department of Courts). In general, before appointment to current position, he was responsible for the development and coordination of the Estonian prison and probation service activities, including the development of case management, social work, labor and health care, training as well as budget and legislative activities.
Mr. Rait Kuuse is also a probation expert with extensive practice in the area of establishment of Probation Services and development and implementation of community sanctions and measures particularly in Eastern Europe. Mr. Kuuse has worked as an international probation expert with key international donor institutions such as the EC, the CoE, the OSCE and Penal Reform International on the development of alternative sanctions to imprisonment. He has held various presentations on this topic, and prepared numerous assessment reports to identify opportunities to improve probation services based on European best practices.
Furthermore, he served in 2008-2009 as Regional Director for the South Caucasus region which is stationed in Georgia. He was responsible for the implementation of different projects in the field of human rights and criminal justice reforms. Given his experiences within both the Penitentiary and the Probation Service, Mr. Kuuse was from 2009-2011 involved in long term EU funded rule of law project “Capacity Building in Support of Rule of Law in Georgia” as a key-expert on probation.
The undersigned …………………………..authorise Pixel to use the data provided in the framework of the activities carried out for the project entitled JCN and to publish the data, entirely or extracts, on the project dissemination documents both on paper and on-line (e.g. project web site, brochures etc.).
Date and Signature: ______