‘Development of Rehabilitation Programme Through Art Activities for Children in Prisons’, or in short ‘Art by Children’ Project, carried out to reduce the rate of recidivation of children after their release from prisons, contributed to the development of an alternative rehabilitation programme to be implemented in juvenile prisons in Türkiye.
The “Art by Children” Project, initiated by the İzmir branch of the Social Services Experts Association (SHUDER), with the support of its partner from Romania, Center for Supporting Lifelong Learning Association (CPIP), developed a programme to strengthen the communication and self-expression skills of children in penitentiary institutions, and to provide solutions for problems they experience in areas like conflict resolution.
Project Coordinator Ezgi Baltalı points out that they held various workshops with penitentiary institutions in line with the objectives of the project and provided trainings for the rehabilitation programme they developed for psychosocial service specialists. Academic research was also conducted on measuring the efficiency of the programme. This academic research, which includes the comparison of alternative rehabilitation programmes in Türkiye, Romania and other EU countries, will be completed at the end of the project and the results will be shared.
Strong and sustainable dialogue for rehabilitation
The opening meeting of the project, with the participation of the Ministry of Justice General Directorate of Prisons and Detention Houses, İzmir Juvenile and Youth Closed Prison and Urla Women’s Open Prison, was held in November 2021. Topics of discussion were the education and rehabilitation activities and art therapy practices for children in juvenile prisons, juvenile education centres and probation directorates in Türkiye.
A detailed study on Romania – EU Adult and Juvenile Justice System was carried out during the study visit held in Timisoara, Romania, hosted by the project partner CPIP in April 2022. During the visit, the juvenile prisons in Romania were introduced, detailed information on the work carried out in the field were provided, and the differences and similarities between Türkiye–EU Juvenile Penal System were discussed.
In May 2022, together with the stakeholders of the project, the “Art by Children” trainers were guests of the İzmir Closed Prison for Women. Here, the trainers paid a visit to the Prison’s Textile and Ceramic Workshop and workshop spaces, and enjoyed the exhibition of the items produced by the children.
What to expect by the end of the project?
By the end of the project, in addition to the partnership established between SHUDER and CPIP, new dialogues will be established with CSOs in EU member states. Thus, along with ongoing academic research, best practices in EU member states will be explored and policy recommendations will be presented to the Ministry of Justice. At the end of the project, the alternative rehabilitation programme will hopefully increase the skills of 16 people from the staff of the juvenile prisons by 100 percent and a 10 percent decrease will be ensured in the rate of delinquent recidivists.