Assessing risk of reoffending in Romanian prisons

Modern prisons around the world have been using risk assessment tools for more than half a century. These tools have evolved alongside prison systems and are now considered to be an essential part of classification and decision making processes of any modern prison. In Romania, the prison administration has gone through several reforms after the 1989 Revolution, and has been using until recently first generation risk assessment tools for its classification committees. In October 2013, the Romanian prison administration in partnership with GRADO, the Romanian Group for Human Rights Defence, started the process of developing a prison risk assessment tool considered to be of forth generation. The paper presents the validation results of this tool, based on data collected at national level in 2015-2016, and discusses current implementation issues as well as further steps. The two presenters act as experts in this project, which was funded by the Open Society Foundation via GRADO.