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Description
Czech Republic has the 4th highest imprisonment rate from the EU countries (197 per 100.000 inhabitants). Czech prisons are overcrowded, which makes individual work with prisoners very difficult. The rate of recidivism is high: 7 out of 10 people return back to prison during their lifetime. There is a lot of prejudice towards people with criminal past in the society and they have to overcome many barriers during their integration after release from prison. There is also lack of support for people after release. We want to empower people with lived experience from prison and include them in policy making and system change in criminal justice. Their experience is extremely valuable but at the moment it is being completely neglected. We will set up a training and empowerment program for a group of people with lived experience to prepare them for advocacy work. After finishing the program, they will actively participate in advocacy activities, working on system change and policy development in criminal justice. We will share all the outcomes and experience with other stakeholders, both NGOs and state institutions, motivating them to include the perspective of people with lived experience in their work and see them as experts and partners. We will rely on the experience of our Norwegian partner, Wayback. Wayback is an organisation built from bottom up by people with lived experience.