I propose to the Government of the Republic of Slovenia to abolish the prison department in Nova Gorica in order to rationalise and humanise the detention and imprisonment.
Approximately 30 employees, in impossible working and spatial conditions, take care of the same number of prisoners, who are detainees and convicts by status. The facilities have been inspected by a number of commissions, but no real action has been taken. The detainees in particular are living in impossible conditions, their walk is a chapter in itself, the corridors resemble some kind of shelter, not to mention the list goes on. The staff, who are no better off themselves (take a look at the office of the shift manager of the judicial police - the guards), are doing their best, but it does not help much. The working conditions and conditions are disastrous for a society that is supposed to be placed in the EU. Despite warnings, pleas and proposals, nothing changes.
I therefore propose that the prison in Nova Gorica be abolished. Its strategic role (border guards) has been extinguished with the accession to the EU. The staff and prisoners will be transferred to the parent prison in Koper. The modern, European-comparable prison there offers everything the penitentiary profession could wish for. It has the most modern large workshops in the country (plastic processing), but unfortunately no one works in them. Just one next to the halls converted into living quarters. Large, modern premises are definitely a more decent place for people to live and work in, with minor building interventions. The few new rooms can easily accommodate 30 people in prison, and all the infrastructure is already in place.
Instructors for whom the legislation has already made it easy to transition and retrain as judicial police officers can actually be used for vacant judicial police officer posts. We are waiting and waiting for the economic situation to improve, for work to become available, etc., even though it is already clear to us that this will certainly not be the case for a few years yet. The fact that 8 instructors are looking after 4 convicts who are working is more than telling. This is just a drain on the state budget.
Not only that. The 20 judicial police officers who have been transferred also represent a personnel strain for each institution, and there are also the social workers, the pedagogues, the instructors, the health service. All of this is absent or reduced to a minimum in Nova Gorica Prison.
One more thing. With the hypertrophy of the general office of the UIKS and the enormous recruitment of new judicial police officers, we note that the workload of the staff has not actually decreased, but remains the same. There is duplication of administration, office posts are being created anew, there is bureaucratisation and statistisation. A few years ago, we abolished a publicly verified secondary school of penology with a top-quality teaching staff, and now we are finding that we need uniform training and we are organising seminars on the nose. In the VPD Radeče we have a residential facility which is physically separated from the parent institution. All the infrastructure, the recreational area, the classrooms. Ideal conditions for an educational centre. Let us please be a little rational in these difficult times for everyone in the years of the seven dry cows. The crisis that is still looming will also have disastrous consequences for us if we do not act rationally.
I am interested to read the annual report. How many prisoners have found regular employment after serving their sentences, how many have had their housing problems solved (I am not referring here to temporary living communities or to placements in various sociable institutions or homes). These are the results of our work.
We are vehemently abolishing CSDs (centres for social work). What is left for us then. A few "volunteer" associations and counsellors at €15 an hour.  If there is no other way, we need to organise some kind of probation service within the existing CSDs to help people after they have served their sentences. We have a bunch of unemployed probation workers. I am most afraid of these afternoon earners at €15 an hour, who would be fed from the state nursery.
Those employees who want to be educated should be allowed to do so. We already know today that, unfortunately, without a full university education (second Bologna degree) there is nothing in the civil service. It is not that we say that there are no funds, but then we find out that some people have been given both tuition fees and study leave because they were simply compatible with the management of the individual institutions. So we have what we have.
Set a medium-term plan. Tie the mandate of the Director-General, the Director of the General Administration and the directors of the institutions to its fulfilment. We have a bunch of capable, highly educated staff.
Some more human rights. There needs to be constant scrutiny, both by the institutions and by civil society. Human rights are a sacred thing, that tiny light that the state has allowed to shine in its might. However disturbing they may be at times, without them we are in a quagmire.