On 06-07 March 2023, the Council of Europe organised a 2-day working group (WG) session as part of ongoing efforts to support BiH institutions in addressing radicalisation and violent extremism in prisons. WG members include project partners coming from the Federal Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Justice of Republika Srpska and prison professionals from Mostar, Bijeljina, Banja Luka, Tuzla, Zenica and State prison.

As a result, a draft manual on information collection, analysis, and exchange was created, which will further facilitate inter-agency cooperation. Among other things, this manual reflects on the role and the importance of prison intelligence work and describes the criteria for the single point of contact. Future work under this component will ensure that every prison in BiH has the capacity to apply the content of this manual when working on preventing radicalisation or countering violent extremism within prisons in BiH.

The  WG session was organized within the project "Ensuring Sustainable Penitentiary Actions in managing rehabilitation of violent extremist prisoners in Bosnia and Herzegovina (ESPA-VEP)", which is funded under the Council of Europe Action Plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina 2022-2025.