Givenich Penitentiary Centre Inmates to Develop Grounds

Signature of an agreement between the Forest and Nature Administration and the Givenich Penitentiary Centre

On 25 September 2018, Luxembourg's Minister of Justice, Félix Braz, and the Minister of the Environment, Carole Dieschbourg, signed a convention on future cooperation between the Forest and Nature Administration and Givenish Penitentiary Centre concerning the realisation and management of a complementary project.

The project provides for the restoration and ecological structuring measures as well as the renaturation of certain state-owned agricultural areas assigned to the Givenich Penitentiary Centre. The set of measures will be an integral part of the national compensatory pool and the offset credits thus generated will be recorded in the National Compensation Register, as provided for by the Nature and Natural Resources Protection Act of 18 July 2018. The project will have the particularity, through the direct involvement of the penitentiary centre, to promote the social reintegration of prisoners through ecological development, maintenance and management. The project is in line with the law of 20 July 2018 on the reform of the Prison Service, which advocates that prison labour is an important measure for their social reintegration.

The new convention aims to combine the reintegration of prisoners and the creation of offsets, while enhancing agricultural land already part of the state. The project will be financed through the Environmental Protection Fund and the implementation of the project and its management will be defined and supervised by a monitoring committee composed of members of the two signatory ministries, the penitentiary centre and the administration of nature and forests.