The First International Congress of Culture of Peace: “Dialogue between prisoners and the Costa Rican penitentiary system”, organized by the Ministry of Justice and Peace, the Center for General Studies and the Chorotega Headquarters of the National University (UNA), will be held from June 22nd and 23rd at the Liberia Campus of the Chorotega Region Headquarters of the National University (UNA).
The event involved 42 people prisoners from 14 criminal centers and some of their relatives, as well as five ex-offenders who are in semi-institutional centers.
From the penitentiary system, 36 officials from the technical areas of Guidance, Psychology, Social Work, Management and Security Headquarters will also participate in the activity.
In the case of UNA, there are 29 participants, students of the project “Culture of peace and artistic expressions with prisoners from the Center of Institutional Attention Calle Real in Liberia and in the Semi-Institutional Center of Nicoya”, and academics from the Center for General Studies from the Liberia Campus of the Chorotega Region Headquarters.
Some of the topics that will be discussed in this activity are prevention of social violence, overcrowding in criminal centers, and humanization of the system, criminal recidivism, effective reintegration and punitive model.
The working groups will be composed of prisoners, prison staff, authorities from the Ministry of Justice and Peace, and students and academics from UNA.
The objective is to collect inputs with a view to the creation of proposals of public policy on the national penitentiary model. Therefore, the meeting ends with the signing of a document with proposals for the Ministry of Justice and Peace, by authorities of both institutions.