Enable – Enabling inclusion and access to justice for defendants with intellectual and/or psychosocial disabilities

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Project duration
September 2022 – September 2024

Donor
European Union

About the project
Defendants and suspects with intellectual and/or psychosocial disabilities face particular barriers to actively and effectively participate in the criminal justice processes. These include physical barriers to reach court buildings, communication barriers, lack of access to legal aid and legal representation. These are the result of gaps and barriers in legislation, lack of skills of criminal justice professionals and inaccessible architecture. Even when some measures exist, they are often inaccessible to persons with disabilities due to a lack of appropriate communication, legal aid and/or legal representation. Moreover, criminal justice professionals often lack awareness, knowledge and skills on how to enable defendants with intellectual and/or psychosocial disabilities to overcome these barriers, which poses further challenges in ensuring a fair hearing.

There are two overall goals of this project:

1. To build the capacity of criminal justice professionals in a sustainable and participatory manner to guarantee non-discrimination of defendants.
2. To improve accessibility of legal services, such as legal aid, legal representation, and e-Justice measures (remote hearings).

These goals will be achieved by:

1. Providing guidance on the role of third parties, such as intermediaries, to support communication.
2. Building capacity of professionals on alternative and augmentative forms of communication and measures that should be in place to support defendants that participate in remote hearings or generally through video-link. These will contribute towards overcoming communication barriers facing defendants with intellectual and/or psychosocial disabilities.
3. Establishment of cooperation protocols between civil society organisations and/or relevant criminal justice authorities to improve accessibility to legal services to promote access to legal aid and access to legal representation.
4. Strengthening certain aspects of the presumption of innocence by developing standards, guidance and capacity-building activities (Bench Book and trainings) to prevent certain behaviour linked with certain types of disability being associated with signs of guilt (nonverbal communication, lack of eye contact, etc.).

Project implementing partners:
Validity Foundation – Mental Disability Advocacy Centre (Hungary), Centre For Legal Resources Crj (Romania), Fenacerci (Portugal), Forum Pro Lidska Prava, ZS (Czech Republic), International Commission of Jurists EU (Belgium), Kera Foundation (Bulgaria), Legal Center for Human Right and Envi (Slovenia), Confederacion Plena Inclusion Espana (Spain).

Project budget: 623 750.99 EUR
Our part in the budget: 57 918.03 EUR

Reference number: 101056701

This project is co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.