On 18-19 March 2023, the Monitoring Department of the Special Penitentiary Service staff was trained on monitoring the identification process of prisoners with mental health problems, effective case management, and provision of relevant services in penitentiary institutions.

The SPS Monitoring Department is responsible for internal prison oversight by observing the fulfilment of legislative requirements and the protection of human rights of prisoners in the penitentiary system. Their increased awareness of the legal and ethical considerations related to the assessment and management of prisoners with mental health problems, while protecting their needs, will promote a more efficient implementation of these responsibilities. They also improved their understanding on provision of relevant psychosocial intervention, stigma reduction, and on the analysis, evaluation and verification of information collected through the WHO QualityRights Toolkit.

One session was dedicated to introducing the training participants to the role and activities of the National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) of Georgia, which approach contributed to better understanding and building further synergies between the two monitoring mechanisms.

This training was conducted under the auspices of the Council of Europe project “Enhancing Healthcare Provision in Georgia’s Penitentiary System”, which is a part of the Council of Europe Action Plan for Georgia 2020-2023.