At the end of April, the multi-year project aimed at introducing a case management method to support people with addiction in 12 Czech prisons will be completed. This project brought together six organizations focused on addictions that are active in the Czech Republic in the field of support for people with addictions and in the field of work with convicts. It brought together experts from several areas related to dealing with addiction and working with prisoners – for example, social workers, therapists, health professionals, addictologists, representatives of the Probation and Mediation Service and others. The project also included education and supervision of individual staff involved in the project – from the professional staff of the cooperating prisons to the staff of individual organizations – and continuous research and continuous evaluation of the entire project and its individual parts.

“With its focus and scope, it was a unique project that has not yet been implemented in the Czech Republic in such a form and scope, and we can perceive it as unique even with regard to the foreign context. We consider the use of case management as a specific way of working with people with addiction, who often accumulate a number of problematic areas that they have to deal with after leaving prison, to be very appropriate. We will be glad if in the future we manage to maintain this method of work and the experience and findings of this project within the system of working with people with addiction in prison across prisons throughout the Czech Republic,” says project coordinator Jakub Michal from the Association of Providers of Addiction Services ( APAS), which covered the entire project. The project was carried out in cooperation with representatives of the Prison Service in individual prisons and with representatives of the General Directorate of the Prison Service of the Czech Republic. Both parties evaluated this mutual cooperation positively and as beneficial.

Part of the completion of the whole project is the publication of its final evaluation report (the third one in the course of the entire project). This report presents a number of current topics related to the support of people with addiction in Czech prisons and social policy and the prison system in the Czech Republic in general.

Case management as a specific way of working with clients

The introduction of the report deals with the method of case management itself, its specifics, benefits for working with this group of clients, as well as the capacities that individual organizations had for it. “This project and the implementation of case management were an impulse for our organization to try to do client work in a different way and use more affordable resources. Thanks to greater networking, relationships with various partakers in the region have improved, which is a great positive that will remain here even after the end of the project,” said one of the case managers in an interview.

However, a number of social workers also pointed out that this method of working with clients is much more intensive and demanding on their capacities and time than those to which they have been accustomed so far. It was also challenging for case managers to repeatedly encounter structural obstacles that exist in the Czech Republic today, such as the absence of stable, dignified and affordable housing for clients, stigmatization of clients released from prison when looking for a job or some inaccessible addiction services. It was also difficult to transfer clients leaving prison between individual organizations or to other social services when clients returned to a region other than the one in which they worked with them during their sentence. In interviews, many social workers talk of a heavy workload, which in some cases had an impact on their mental health. They stated that the ideal number of clients for this type of work was around ten clients released from prison per social worker, but in many cases the workers had many more clients at one time. “It’s difficult and time-consuming. Some assistance to clients after their release has the character of a twelve-hour working day. The demands on social workers are great, they have to have a great overview of the whole issue and be very flexible in terms of time,” says another case manager in an interview.

Change in the financing and logic of funding of social services and social work

The financing of social services in the Czech Republic is set to as many contacts with clients as possible. This results in a systemic overload of social workers, their fluctuation and a poorer quality of work with clients. Case management is an intensive type of social work. In addition to that, the group of people with addiction who often have a larger number of complex needs, is quite negatively affected by this setting. “The project opens up the question  whether this setting of financing services in the Czech Republic should not be re-evaluated and should not be based on more intensive comprehensive work with clients, which will not be based primarily on quantification indicators,” says criminologist Jiří Mertl, the author of the evaluation report, who works at Charles University in Prague. The report also points to the uncertainty of the financing of social services, which in the Czech Republic are mostly financed only by projects or subsidies, and usually only for one year.

The evaluation report also draws attention to the insufficient funding of social services in the Czech Republic in comparison with neighbouring and northern European countries. The Czech Republic has long spent less than one percent of its GDP on social services providing support to marginalized groups. In Germany, three percent, in Austria between two and three percent, in Finland almost six percent, in Sweden seven percent and in Denmark even over seven percent of GDP are spent on such services (Llena-Nozal et al., 2022).
In the Czech Republic in 2018, there were around 100 inhabitants per social worker, in Austria it is 50, and in Germany, France, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway, for example, it is 25 or less. In the Czech Republic, social workers make up about two percent of the total employed population.  in Iceland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden it is between six and eight percent, and in Denmark and Norway it is between ten and twelve percent. This can also have a significant impact on the level of support or lack of support in society for prevention and proposals for increases in social policy funding.

More transparent and systematic parole

The previous evaluation report of this project has already drawn attention to the negative impact on working with clients with addiction and on their preparation for release from prison due to non-transparent and unpredictable rules for the conditional release of prisoners from Czech prisons. Interviewees stated that often, with a few exceptions, they do not see any specific systematic pattern on the basis of which people are or are not released. When the requests of people serving prison sentences are not granted, social workers must cancel the agreed follow-up services. These include, for example, places in residential services or accommodation that could be paid for clients for a temporary period thanks to the funds of this project.

Complications were also caused by an unpredictable day or time of release of the person in case the application for conditional release was granted. The administrative formalities associated with the release can take from tens of minutes to several hours. At the same time, the public prosecutor has three days to file a complaint, and if they do not waive it, the entire period runs automatically. It is often not clear when the service should be booked, and social workers are not able to block out half a day to several days for each person being released to wait for them in front of the prison and provide them with assistance. This helps to minimise the risk that the client will not arrive at the agreed place after release or will lose contact with social workers. “The solution could be a simple amendment to the legislation by setting a certain deadline, for example, a week or 14 days, between the court’s decision and the person’s release itself. During this time, it would be possible to resolve all the requirements and it would be clear when exactly the person would be released, which would facilitate subsequent work with him/her,” explains Jiří Mertl. Social workers also encountered that clients were referred in the decision not to approve a request for conditional release to programs for working with aggression, which are not available in the prison in question, or that the request of clients who had already gone through all the programs of the prison in question and therefore had no further programs to enter was not granted.

Support for affordable housing and housing first policies

The most frequent structural problem that social workers encountered when supporting clients after their release was the unavailability of decent housing. In most cases, only rooming houses were available to clients, which for a number of reasons are a completely unsuitable type of housing for these people. “Rooming houses are risky. There are often drugs there. Even though we have funds in the project to provide temporary housing for clients, we often fail to find anything other than the one in a rooming house,” the project case managers say in interviews. They often spent hours calling to find housing for their clients at least in a rooming house.
“It is also necessary to point out that this is a very unstable type of housing and that the clients’ situation is only temporarily resolved and they will have to deal with it again soon, this time without the support of the project. Let us hope, therefore, that the law on housing support will be adopted as soon as possible. The capacities of unused residential premises, of which there are up to 860,000 in the Czech Republic, could also be better used, according to an analysis by the Ministry for Regional Development,” points out Jiří Mertl.

Building a culture of cooperation between prisons and NGOs

Interviews with case managers of individual organizations also showed that in a number of prisons their cooperation with representatives of the Prison Service was good. In many places, however, it was based on specific individuals and the personal relationships of case managers with them. If these people left their positions, cooperation with the prison became more complicated. At the same time, the Prison Service has also long been struggling with the low number of its staff and their long-term work overload.

“A measure that could significantly improve cooperation with non-profit organization staff in prisons could be the establishment of coordinators who would be in charge of cooperation with non-profit organizations. They would be in charge of administrative matters related to visits by social workers, guide clients to consultations, provide premises for them, and deal with current problematic situations. A coordinator would have a good overview of the projects and work of non-profit organizations, they would have a clearly defined person with whom to communicate in the prison,” suggests Jakub Michal from APAS. Representatives of addictology organizations would also appreciate the expansion of the practice that is already in place in some prisons – the staff of these organizations have the opportunity to move more freely within some pre-defined areas of the prison after long-term experience and prior agreement. They do not have to be accompanied to all places by Prison Service staff.

At the end of February 2024, the project included:

• 315 clients from various prisons in the Czech Republic who had prepared a release plan (i.e., what to focus on, what to do after leaving prison)
• 177 of them had already left prison (the rest are still awaiting release / they applied for early leave • 75 of them successfully completed the entire program – i.e. they were in contact with the case manager even half a year after leaving the prison (for such cases,
the risk of their further return to the prison of recidivism is significantly reduced)

The final evaluation report of the project can be downloaded here:

• Final research and evaluation report of the project “Systemic Provision of Care for Imprisoned Drug Users and Its Subsequent Continuity after Release” (April 2024, PDF)

Evaluation report methodology

The final evaluation report of the project is based on qualitative and quantitative research activities. A total of 47 individual interviews, nine group interviews and seven focus groups were conducted during the project. Interviews were conducted in three waves with the project team, individual case managers, the contact staff of the cooperating prisons and, towards the end of the project, also with clients. The quantitative part of the research consisted of three questionnaires: needs questionnaires, stabilization questionnaires and satisfaction questionnaires. Needs questionnaires and stabilization questionnaires were always provided to clients at the beginning of the cooperation, at the time of release from prison and at the end of the cooperation. Satisfaction questionnaires were provided to clients at the end of the cooperation. A total of 648 needs questionnaires (371 at the beginning of the cooperation, 200 at the release and 77 at the end of the cooperation), 714 stabilisation questionnaires (389 at the beginning of the cooperation, 214 at the time of release and 111 at the time of termination of cooperation) and 83 satisfaction questionnaires were collected. The questionnaires were analysed using descriptive statistics and the MAXQDA software was used to process the open-ended questions.

About the project:

In the Association of Providers of Addiction Services’ project “Systemic Provision of Care for Imprisoned Drug Users and Its Subsequent Continuity after Release”, organizations that work in the Czech Republic in the field of support for people with addictions and in the field of work with convicts have joined together in a joint multi-year project. The aim of the project was to create and pilot a new Case Management method for working with inmates with drug addiction in twelve Czech prisons. It brought together experts from several areas related to dealing with addiction and working with prisoners – for example, social workers, health professionals, addictologists, representatives of the Probation and Mediation Service and others. We support the transfer of this method to other prison facilities throughout the country. The project also included education and supervision of individual staff involved in the project – from the professional staff of the cooperating prisons to the staff of individual organizations and continuous research and continuous evaluation of the entire project and its individual parts. Information about the project is published at the website www.pracezamrizemi.cz.

Partner organisations involved in the project:

• Magdaléna, o.p.s.
• KOTEC, o.p.s.
• Centrum protidrogové prevence a terapie, o.p.s.
• Laxus z.ú.
• Společnost Podané ruce o.p.s.
• SANANIM z.ú.

Contact person:

Václav Zeman, media support for the project
tel.: +420 732 151 250
email: vaclav.zeman.pr@gmail.com