The 24th annual conference of the European Society of Criminology (ESC), EUROCRIM 2024, took place in Bucharest, Romania on 11th -14th of September. It is one of the most important criminology events in Europe, attracting more than 1,500 researchers and experts from around the world. The academic environment of the University of Bucharest, where the conference took place, created a platform for lively discussions and new collaborations.
The conference covered a wide range of criminological subjects, presenting the latest research and national practices. Over the four days of the event, presentations were given on cyber and economic crime, the threats and opportunities of artificial intelligence, gender-based violence and prevention strategies, political radicalisation, the use and challenges of scientific methodologies. A separate session was devoted to a group of researchers from the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Social Science Centre (LCSS LI), researching the work of prison officers and the change in their professional role in the context of the reforms of the penitentiary system.
The results of the qualitative research carried out during the project "Changes in prison officers’ professional roles within the shifting custodial sentencing policy and practice" (PRISTA) (2023-2025) funded by the Research Council of Lithuania were presented at the session. The results reveal the internal contradictions and conflicts experienced by Lithuanian prison officers in their efforts to combine the functions of ensuring order and resocialising prisoners. The study also focuses on the recent reform of the penal system and the heritage of Lithuanian prisons - the Soviet-era punishment and post-Soviet prison cultures, which were explored in a 2015 publication by foreign scholars L. Piacentini and G. Slade.
It was this legacy and the efforts to get rid of it that were presented by Dr. Rūta Vaičiūnienė, a researcher at the LCSS LI, in the first presentation of the session. Based on qualitative research data - interviews with prison staff - she discussed the changes taking place in Lithuanian prisons in order to modernise the penal system and its impact on the staff. The speaker highlighted the changing roles and responsibilities of staff in the day-to-day work and tried to address the questions of how power dynamics are changing and why the social climate is important in the management of an institution.
In his presentation, Dr. Simonas Nikartas compared the experiences of role perceptions and internal conflicts of prison officers (2024 qualitative research data) and probation officers (2018 qualitative research data) in the context of reforms. According to the researcher, balancing the contrasting roles of rehabilitation and control due to the ongoing reforms is a challenge for officials in both institutions, as they need to adapt to changing aims, ideologies and regulations in their day-to-day roles.
In the panel session, doctoral student Liubovė Jarutienė, based on the qualitative research carried out during the project, presented her insights on the subject of the relationship between prison staff and inmates. According to the researcher, positive relations between officials and inmates are considered by foreign researchers to be one of the most important elements of the quality of prison life. During the interviews, Lithuanian prison staff identified respectful and professional communication with prisoners as one of the ways of ensuring order, as it is one of the main approaches of dynamic security. However, the researcher emphasised that this kind of interaction is often challenging for officers due to the heavy workload and the paperwork that often occupies a large part of the working day.
The session was concluded with a presentation by Dr. Artūras Tereškinas on emotions in Lithuanian prisons. Based on twenty-five semi-structured interviews with officers of the resocialization units of Lithuanian prisons, the researcher revealed how emotions are managed in these total control institutions. In his presentation, he outlined the most important emotion management strategies used by prison staff, their ability to develop emotional intelligence and to recognise and understand their emotions. Recent changes in Lithuanian prison policy and their impact on the emotional health of officers in these institutions were also discussed during the presentation.
The international conference EUROCRIM 2024 offered an opportunity to network internationally, as well as to discuss the results of the project's qualitative research and initial insights with researchers from different countries. For more information on the project "Changes in prison officers’ professional roles within the shifting custodial sentencing policy and practice" (PRISTA) implemented by the research team, visit: https://teise.org/en/projektai/prista/.