Supporting Prison Officers and Foreign-National Prison Inmates

 

A report in Der Standard (http://derstandard.at/1358305154185/Mehrsprachig-im-Haefn describes the massive problems that exist with multi-lingualism in prisons and the criminal justice system – according to der Standard, Austrian prisons are populated by individuals from no less than 110 different nationalities!

Whilst a great many of foreign-national prison inmates have lived for years in Austria and can speak fluent German – or at least can communicate with prison staff in English – those with proficiency neither in German nor English have to rely on interpreting from other inmates with important tasks such as filling in forms and understanding prison rules and regulations.

This not only presents a problem for individual prison inmates, but places a massive strain on prison staff and officials, who work extremely hard under very difficult conditions to maintain a positive, orderly regime.  Any communication difficulties between staff and inmates must be very frustrating for prison officials, and could leave to difficult – and potentially dangerous – situations.
Prison staff currently have the opportunity to take English training as part of their professional development through the Strafvollzugsakademie, but according to der Standard there are few opportunities for prison staff in Austria to learn how to communicate in Russian, Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian or other languages which are common amongst the foreign-national prison population.

Without these language skills, prison staff are prevented from being able to communicate important instructions and regime information – and foreign-national inmates are unable to fully understand their rights.  As reported in der Standard, inmates would be likely to miss important family or legal visits, if they have no idea what the word ‘visit’ actually means.

Whilst der Standard acknowledges that the current situation is less than optimal, the project Languages Behind Bars (LBB) is addressing the issue head-on.  A European-Funded Project, Languages Behind Bars is developing and piloting a new learning programme to help foreign-national prison inmates communicate – and understand – key prison-related information in the local language.  At the same time, these learning materials are offered to prison staff in multiple languages, providing them the opportunity to communicate instructions in various important languages.
Coordinated by die Berater® with the support of the European Prison Education Association (www.EPEA.org), LBB is being piloted in Germany, France, Holland, Bulgaria and the UK.  We hope to be able to make these learning programmes available in Austria in the future.
For more information on the LBB project, visit the website www.lbb-project.eu.