On July 12 in Parliament was carried out a sitting of the Reference Group within the Institute for Penal Reform. The discussions were focused on the plan of actions emerging from the establishment of the Probation Service and the Law on mediation.
As members of the Reference Group within the project "Strengthening the Reform of Criminal Justice System in the Republic of Moldova", with the financial support of ICCO (The Interchurch Organization for Development), were: Maria
Postoico - Deputy Chairman of the Parliament of Republic Moldova, Raisa
Botezatu - Vice Chairman of the Supreme Court of Justice, Igor
Serbinov - Deputy Prosecutor General, Vladimir
Trofim - Director General of the Department of Penitentiary Institutions, Vladimir
Popa - Head of the Probation Department within the Enforcement Department, Igor
Dolea - Director of the Institute for Penal Reform and Victor
Zaharia - Head of the Probation and Institutional Reform Department, IRP.
The establishment of the probation service in Moldova in January 2006, requires the support from state and society in carrying out its missions. The Institute for Penal Reform took upon itself the obligation to make an exchange of experience gathered in the field of pre-trial, trial and post-trial probation with the recently established service. The most acute problems in training the probation officers relate to the drawing up of the curriculum, the necessary books and the carrying out of these trainings. Therefore, the process of training the probation officers will be facilitated due to the elaboration by IRP of the materials (guides, books etc.).
The Parliament of the Republic of Moldova adopted the law on mediation. According to it the mediators will be issued a license by the Ministry of Justice. Their training will be carried out both by the Ministry of Justice and other nongovernmental bodies. The law promoter was the Institute for Penal Reform which assumed the obligation to carry out the mediators training. For this purport, a textbook and the ethical code of the mediator were edited, as well as a curriculum.
A special attention was paid to the cooperation between the mediators and the legal bodies. Thus it was suggested to present a proposal for the amendment of the Criminal Procedure Code, through the investigating bodies and courts which are supposed to transmit to the mediators the files liable to conciliation. It has been ascertained that in such cases the repair of the prejudice caused to the victim is much faster than in the traditional process.
