“Cultural Diversity and Prison: Attitudes, Perceptions and Management of Foreign Prisoners by Prison Staff”.
Socio-political changes taking place inEurope since 1990 and in recent years, resulted, among others, to a multicultural transformation of the society. As a result, the number of foreigners crossing the Greek borders has increased as well as the population in Greekprisons. Nowadays prison is constantly undergo transformation into a moremulti-cultural and multi-religious environment. This phenomenon is a completely new challenge for both prison stuff and the prisoners. The major challenge for those who are involved in this field is to ensure decent living conditions for foreign inmates and to reduce the phenomenon of unequal treatment during the time of their sentence in Greek prisons. Therefore, this research aims at an in depth understanding of the role of prison stuff (attitudes, perceptions and management) towards foreign prisoners, as well as an in depth understanding of foreign prisoners daily lives during their imprisonment. Its purpose is to formulate a broader proposal for the establishment of an approach – management of foreign prisoners in Greek prisons , focused on the demands and needs of both sides. A qualitative survey will be carried out using the tools of file research, semi-structured interview with prison stuff and participatory observation in a prison. We are optimist that the results that will emerge from this research will be an interpretive and organizationaltool for the establishment of an approach – management of foreign prisoners but also for the design and implementation of training programmes for penitentiary staff.
Keywords: prison, prison staff, foreign prisoners, cultural diversity
Asimopoulos Charisios (Supervisor), Professor, Department of Social Work, University of West Attica
Poulopoulos Charalampos, Professor, Department of Social Work, Democritus University of Thrace
Dedotsi Sofia, Assistant Professor, Department of Social Work, University of West Attica
