The practice of conditional release from prison in Romania

摘要

In Romania, in 2012, according to the statistical data of National Administration of Prisons, 17.969 inmates have been screened out by the conditional release board of the Romanian penitentiaries. Almost 59% of them have been proposed for conditional release, while 41% have been postponed for a new reassessment. In the international scientific literature, different hypotheses have been advanced regarding the role of conditional release, ranging from those that assert that conditional release promotes prisoners' re-adjustment and reintegration into the community, to those that suggest that it reduces the costs of incarceration. This paper presents the preliminary findings of an investigation whose main objective was to reveal how the operational and practical aspects of conditional release in Romania are perceived both by the practitioners from the prison system and by the detainees. The methodology employed in the study consisted of: a) semi-structured interviews with members of the conditional release boards from Giurgiu and Rahova Prisons; b) questionnaires applied to a lot of 100 inmates held in Giurgiu Prison whose proposals for conditional release have been denied at the first analysis of the penitentiary board. The study concludes with a set of recommendations for the criminal justice practice and policy.