Innovating together : Connecting European Penitentiary Training Academies

2026-07-22

The European Penitentiary Training Academies Network (EPTA) was founded to provide a structure that supports sharing of training methodologies and contents across Europe. It aims to enable cooperation to raise the quality of penitentiary staff training. In the past years the EPTA network has proven its great potential and became a more professional and structured network, translating into a substantial increase in membership and the launch of a new website. This project builds further on these achievements to provide for a stronger and sustainable network and more in-depth information sharing. The ETPA network will stimulate participation and exchange in the network and will allow existing and future European members to profit from the results. As a direct target group the National Training Academies will be able to use innovative tools developed by the ETPA network, and keep track of new developments in the field of training correctional staff. By stimulating mutual learning they will directly benefit from the project and save resources in the process of developing high quality trainings for their correctional staff. The project will undertake the following activities: project meetings, external mid and end evaluation, further development of communication tools, three annual network meetings, crisis management workshop and innovative training methods, three cross border training staff exchanges and a meeting between EPTA and other staff training institutions such as the Confederation of European Probation. Through these activities the project aims to: 1) improve communication between EPTA members, 2) stimulate professional exchange and cooperation between training academies on a European level, and 3) address three specific needs identified with the Training Academies through tailor-made work sessions. These outcomes will provide a stronger and sustainable network with increased capacity to tackle training needs and improve cross-border cooperation.

Netherlands

2025-10-15