Serving a custodial sentence in the modern sense represents a different approach from the past. In the history of imprisonment, deprivation of liberty was linked to detaining the offender, while detention was meant to ensure that the person did not evade the punishment, even death, or run away from the obligation to repay a debt to a creditor. Only in the last two centuries has the concept of the re-educational and resocializing character of custodial sentencing prevailed. For this reason, social work is closely linked with social pedagogy in this process. The term penitentiary pedagogy is generally not used for educational and educational activity carried out under the conditions of serving a custodial sentence.

Some authors, especially German ones, used for it the term criminal pedagogy, authors from the former Soviet Union spoke of reformatory-labor pedagogy, and other mainly Polish authors spoke of resocialization pedagogy. The problem, however, lies elsewhere. If the offender is in daily interaction with an educational pedagogue, we can speak of this as a more or less successful resocialization process. The problem then arises at the moment of release. Suddenly, the former offender is left with nothing but himself and his family (if it has not abandoned him). Of course, there is a post-penitentiary care system, but we must ask: Is it adequate? Is it effective? Above all, we have to start from several facts:

  1. Returning home after completion of a longer prison sentence is a stressful experience. The released offender enters a new environment. New buildings and streets have appeared, local knowledge of the environment has cracked. The former convict often loses his apartment, housing, job, and support.
  2. His ties and relationships are torn apart. Marriage has often collapsed, friends have found new friends, parents have moved away or may have died. There is often no one to turn to.
  3. The releasee must find a job or another source of legal income. Old creditors call, demanding settlement of their claims. In many former prisoners, suppressed drug dependence, sexual deprivation, suppressed alcohol dependence, etc., resurface.
  4. In today’s public administration, as well as with many private legal and natural persons, proof of good conduct is required when applying for employment, which makes finding a job virtually impossible for this group.

This is where the released person reaches a dead end. He can turn to the adult social curatorship authority. But what can the social curator provide him?

Social curatela for adults
The body for the legal and social protection of children and adult social curatela provides, for an adult individual, the following counselling and services:

  • after release from serving a custodial sentence or detention, if he is also a participant in probation or mediation under special regulations,
  • if he uses drugs or is dependent on drugs,
  • after termination of institutional care and educational protection after reaching adulthood,
  • if he was released from a healthcare facility for the treatment of drug dependence or other dependencies,
  • if he was released from a facility for the resocialization of drug-dependent persons,
  • if he asks for help in solving an adverse life situation.

Protective supervision and probation supervision

Protective supervision and probation supervision are regulated in our Criminal Code in § 76 and § 119. § 76
„(1) The court shall impose protective supervision on an offender it convicts for a particularly serious offense to an unconditional term of imprisonment.“ Compared to the past, this is a change, since protective supervision in this sense is provided only for a very narrow group of offenders.

There is also probation supervision under § 119 of the Criminal Code, which is imposed in connection with a conditional postponement of a custodial sentence. This is also not imposed on every convicted person.
(1) If the court conditionally postpones the custodial sentence of a juvenile for a probationary period, or conditionally postpones the custodial sentence to a probationary period with probation supervision, it also sets the probationary period at one to three years.

This supervision is carried out by a court probation and mediation officer. Unfortunately, in judicial practice there remains a group of offenders who, even under conditional postponement of a custodial sentence or immediately after completing a custodial sentence, continue to engage in criminal activity. These are mainly people dependent on psychoactive substances, where securing access to these substances is connected with committing crime, primarily of an acquisitive nature (especially under §212 CZ, theft).

We therefore propose the following solutions. Two kinds of protective supervision should be legislated:

a) strict protective supervision, which would be in line with today’s understanding of protective supervision.

b) ordinary protective supervision as a mandatory service and obligation for every person sentenced to a term of imprisonment for one year after completion of the sentence, as well as for every sentenced person during the conditional postponement of the execution of a custodial sentence. Unlike strict protective supervision, this would be carried out by a special adult curator of the department of social and legal protection of youth and adults.

Rationale:

a) Our idea is based on the assumption that the education of adults through imprisonment is quite costly and of limited effectiveness, as evidenced by the relatively high recidivism of convicted persons. According to Ronec, the recidivism of convicted women is about 40% (Ronec, 2008).

b) The no-exit situation of an individual after completion of a custodial sentence has, besides the high stress for the affected person, this impact on society: this person often quickly returns to committing crime again. Despite the new values that the offender adopts during re-education during the sentence, and despite resocialization, if the social-curator system is based on voluntary participation rather than obligation, many such clients will instead seek former companions and friends than a specialist. The problem also arises in small municipalities, where at municipal offices it is difficult to find a social-work professional, let alone a special curator. The self-government specialist Doktorov states that: „Mestá disponujú úradmi na vysokej kvalifikačnej úrovni a vysokou špecializáciou pracovníkov, kým v malých obciach na Slovensku (do 1000 obyvateľov) typické obsadenie obecného úradu pozostáva zo starostu a obvykle dvoch administratívnych pracovníčok so stredoškolským vzdelaním“. (Doktorov,2007,s.56). (Hašková & Doktorov, 2005).

Adult protective supervision curator

The concept of two levels of mandatory protective supervision within post-penitentiary social care would be unrealistic without a legally precisely established position of the social curator for protective supervision. This curator would be created with the following characteristics:

a) special powers and protection as a public official. Among his or her powers could be:

  • changing a conditionally suspended sentence with probationary period to an unconditional custodial sentence as proposed by the court,
  • control of the client’s place of residence and source of income,
  • social guarantee for clients’ employment together with a system of social insurance contribution reliefs, as support for employing convicted persons,
  • permission for the client to leave the place of designated residence,
  • submitting a proposal to the court to shorten the probationary period of a conditional sentence for good behavior of the client;

b) strict territorial division. Each such curator must have a clearly and precisely defined area of competence (by the client’s permanent residence or last permanent residence);

c) cooperation with police authorities and courts.

The situation is complicated, however, by residents of rural areas, members of the marginalized Roma minority, who in addition to behavioural problems have serious communication problems. According to Lorán (2008, s. 22): „Za marginalizovaného Róma považujeme občana SR, ktorý je mierne tmavšej alebo tmavej pleti, vo väčšej miere interpersonálne komunikujúceho iba v rómskom jazyku a reálne nachádzajúceho sa v stave sociálnej a ekonomickej degradovanosti.“

In these areas, a solution will likely be the creation of an assistant to the protective supervision curator who masters the Roma language and can communicate with the Roma minority, and where relevant, with the national minority present in that curator’s jurisdiction.

Conclusion

In this brief article, we wanted to draw attention to the underestimated importance of post-penitentiary social care, to propose a new approach that would move toward optimizing this state and at the same time help society to solve and approach people with pathological social behavior more effectively.

Author: PhDr. Jarmila Doktorovová
Vysoká škola zdravotníctva a sociálnej práce sv. Alžbety
Ústav Rómskych Európskych štúdii

List of bibliographic references

[1] HAŠKOVÁ, A., – DOKTOROV, A. 2005. Conclusions on the effectiveness of the implementation of primary schools. Nitra : UKF Nitra - Pedagogická fakulta. ISBN 80-8050-934-4.
[2] LORAN, T. 2008. Human capital among marginalized Roma from the perspective of educational and labour-market knowledge needs. In TÓTH, K. – LELKES, G. Národnostné a etnické menšiny na Slovensku. Šamorín : Fórum, inštitút pre výskum menšín. ISBN 978-80-89249-24-4, s. 1-95.
[3] RONEC, P. Š. (24. 04 2008). www.edukos.sk/user/files/6956462e9190776cfcfe6c4f0023e4df Cit. 3. 9 2010. Dostupné na Internete: www.edukos.sk/user/files/bf5bf403ad28caff880980e26c0a7e46 www.edukos.sk
[4] Act No. 300/2005 Z.z. Criminal Code in force in later supplements and amendments. Slovensko.

The lecture was delivered at the international scientific conference Applied Ethics in Social Work and Other Helping Professions, held on 20–21 October 2010 in Piešťany, and was published in the proceedings of this conference: MÁTEL, A. – SCHAVEL, M. – MÜHLPACHR, P. – ROMAN, T. 2010. Aplikovaná etika v sociálnej práci a ďalších pomáhajúcich profesiách. Zborník z medzinárodnej vedeckej konferencie. Bratislava : VŠZaSP sv. Alžbety. 413 s. ISBN 978-80-89271-89-4.