It is intended to establish a halfway house in Plunge

For this purpose, on Lentpjūvės street for 520 thousand. the building was purchased for EUR.

“It will be possible to accommodate up to 28 persons – men and women. By initiating the development of half-way houses, the Lithuanian Prison Service is trying to distribute its network in Lithuania in such a way that there is one half-way house in each county of Lithuania,” Virginija Vervečkaitė, representative of the Lithuanian Prison Service, said to BNS.

According to her, such a direction of development was chosen taking into account statistics, because a significant number of persons who have served their sentence in a prison return to live where their relatives are located.

According to her, there are additional requirements for halfway houses – in cases where it is not possible to take over the building, proposals from the private sector are also evaluated. Also, the specifics of halfway house facilities and their compatibility with the needs of the community of residents are evaluated with representatives of the local police.

Next week, on November 16, a meeting is planned with the community of Plungė in the district municipality hall, where the halfway house concept is planned to be presented to them.

Representatives of the Lithuanian Prison Service, the Lithuanian Probation Service, and the police will take part in the meeting.

There are seven institutions

Seven halfway houses have been operating in Lithuania since 2016, they operate in Vilnius, Alytus, Marijampole, Pravieniškės, Panevėžys, Šiauliai and Taurage.

Recently, plans to build half-way houses were also announced in Domeikava, Kaunas district, but local residents, city and district municipalities are against it. Opponents of the project say that the area is densely populated, a high school is nearby, it is less than 300 meters from the future halfway house building, and there are also kindergartens nearby. People are worried about whether a safe environment will be provided.

Previously, it was planned to build a halfway house in another village in the Kaunas district, Girionysi, but there was also similar opposition from the residents, and the institution was not established.

The Prison Service says that in the halfway house convicts will be prepared for release from the prison, integration into the labor market and society, and the practice of Lithuania and foreign countries shows that such an intermediate stop between the prison and freedom ensures a significantly lower repeat crime rate.

“The main goals: to facilitate the integration of convicts who are finishing their sentences into society and to allow imprisoned persons to gradually adapt to life in freedom, the changes that have taken place here,” the service says.

Strict rules

A foster home is a place of imprisonment, with strict rules and controls. In them, all convicts have to work or study, and with the income they earn, they can pay the claims awarded to them earlier, and they continue to work even after serving their sentence.

The service emphasizes that convicts here go to work or an educational institution and back home only at a pre-approved time and route, which is made according to the provided work schedules or educational schedules.

“In the foreseen cases, after leaving the place of execution of the sentence, the convicts can be monitored by means of electronic monitoring. Therefore, a halfway house should not be compared to parole from a prison,” says the Lithuanian Prison Service.

The decision on the conditions of execution of the sentence applied to the convict is made by the officers authorized by the order of the director of the prison service, usually the heads of the prisons. These decisions are based on the recommendations of service officers and specialists who assess the motivation and behavior of convicts according to the strict criteria specified in the law.

Those who do not comply with the conditions are transferred

Convicts who, while serving their sentence in a halfway house, do not work or study without justifiable reasons, or who start to pose a danger to prison staff, are immediately transferred back to a more closed type of sentence execution place.

In foster homes, there is also a mandatory order to be completely sober at all times. This is checked periodically, and in case of violation of this rule, convicts are also immediately transferred back to the place of execution of a more closed type of punishment.

However, according to the service, until now there have been no cases when persons serving a sentence in halfway houses have received administrative or criminal penalties.

Up to 3% of nannies serve prison terms at home. from all convicts serving a prison sentence.

Since 2016, 621 convicts have served their prison sentences in halfway houses. 9 percent of them were sent back to the place of execution of a harsher sentence for violation of internal rules.

During the entire seven-year period of operation, not a single convict was punished for a crime committed while he was serving his sentence under the conditions provided by the halfway house.

There are a total of about 5 thousand in Lithuania. convicted and arrested.