Together, Learning and Thinking about Punishment (PID020)

11am – 11.30am EDT, 25 October 2023 ‐ 30 mins

Workshop Session

In this workshop we discuss how university students, prison officers and incarcerated learners can be equally seen as students in a semester-course on penology. This workshop shows how transformative learning can take place behind prison walls, and zooms in on the experiences of all participants.

Speakers

Virna Van der Elst

Prison Director, Federal Public Service Justice - DG EPI, Belgium

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Sofie De Bus

Visiting Professor, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

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Iris Naert

Prison director jr., Federal Public Service Justice - DG EPI, Belgium

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Virna Van der Elst

Prison Director, Federal Public Service Justice - DG EPI, Belgium

Virna is a criminologist who started her career serving a local police force. In 2000, she started as a restorative justice consultant in the Prison of Antwerp. Through the years she is an active tutor at the Prison Academy with speciality in restorative justice, HR and integrity policy. In 2007, she promoted as a Prison director.

Since 2010, she operates as a deputy judge for the Court of execution of sentences in Antwerp and in 2013 she started in the new Prison of Beveren. Before the opening she helped organizing the given regime in the prison for inmates with long sentences. The knowledge of building and opening a new Prison is at this moment useful for the new-to-build prison of Antwerp.

Sofie De Bus

Visiting Professor, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

Dr. Sofie De Bus holds a Master of Science in Criminology (VUB, 2009), a PhD in Criminology (VUB, 2018) and a Master of Laws (VUB, 2019). She works as a Postdoctoral researcher and Guest Lecturer at the Criminology Department and as a teaching and research assistant at the Department of Private and Economic Law of the Free University of Brussels (Belgium).

In her PhD in Criminology, Sofie studied the role of gender and gendered practices within the Youth Court. She is currently preparing an empirical-legal research on the impact of the Sixth State Reform on Belgian Youth Law and Youth Protection. Her research interests are situated within youth law, family law and youth criminology with an emphasis on empirical-legal research (youth court actors, legal guarantees of minors in youth and family law, legal aid of minors, vulnerable groups in the youth justice system).

Iris Naert

Prison director jr., Federal Public Service Justice - DG EPI, Belgium

Iris is a criminologist who started her career in 2009 as junior director at the Training Academy for prison staff. In 2019 she worked as junior director in the Prison in Turnhout and since 2021, again at the Training Academy. She is responsible for management, budgeting, developing of curricula and curriculum planning. In particular the basic training of administrative prison staff and continued training of all prison staff in Flanders. She also participated in international projects regarding radicalization.