It’s important to reflect that volunteering is highly impacted by the socio-cultural context where it develops. In contexts like Serbia and Romania, research shows that volunteering is not a widespread practice, being linked with socialist legacy and regarded with scepticism by the public. In other contexts, volunteering is more widely acknowledged. In criminal justice systems, the involvement of volunteers in probation rests on a national engagement with local Departments of Justice, partnerships with probation services, and specific projects that promote volunteering in the assistance of convicted people.
The Council of Europe, as outlined in Recommendations CM/Rec (2010) by the Committee of Ministers to its member states regarding the Council of Europe Probation Rules, describes a volunteer involved in probation as “a person carrying out probation activities who is not paid for this work. This does not exclude the payment of a small amount of money to volunteers to cover the expenses of their work.”
The CoPPer project aims to aims to promote the active engagement of citizens, civil society and social partners in the social inclusion of people that commit crimes, ensuring that we all play our role as key guarantors of a common European culture of rule of law, common values, democracy, freedom, security and prosperity.
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