What is CIRA?
CIRA is an organisational risk assessment tool that aims to raise awareness about risks and support prison governors/prison system administrators to reflect and assess the
prison/prison service readiness to contend with significant security emergencies.
The tool was developed to be used in a facilitated session by prison system administrators and prison governors and their management teams aiming to assess readiness to contend with significant security emergencies in a prison/prison system.
Such exercise (following 12 dimensions and more than 200 questions) contributes to an efficient prioritisation of tasks, facilitating the identification of the most relevant problems, their probability of happening within the core of a prison/prison system, its inherent consequences, and how urgent should it be tackled/addressed. In sum, highly probable factors could have a severe consequence, putting in jeopardy the effectiveness of a prison/prison system if such a problem suddenly arises. Realising a particular “need” within the core of a prison/prison system could anticipate the appearance of a highly challenging problem and, therefore, avoid undesirable consequences.
The response scale of this instrument helps prison governors and administrators to reflect on factors according to the Probability (probability of existing/happening and creating a problem) and Consequence (how severe will the consequences be, how urgent do we need to deal with it) of each one of them within his/her prison or country’s prison service.
To know more about how to train your own facilitators to use CIRA in your organisation, contact us ips@prisonsystems.eu
