January 2010
The ABA Rule of Law Initiative (ABA ROLI) recently completed the methodology for its latest legal assessment tool, the Detention Procedure Assessment Tool (DPAT). The new tool, which will be piloted in Armenia in February 2010, encompasses both pretrial detention and sentencing, and evaluates legal frameworks, procedures and practice in light of international standards. This enables a comprehensive legal and factual analysis that identifies strengths and weaknesses and guides future rule of law programming. All DPAT assessments will be collected and presented in a standardized format, allowing users to compare the performance of different countries and, via reassessments, to look at a country’s performance over time.
The pilot DPAT will be incorporated into ABA ROLI’s criminal law reform program in Armenia. Senior Criminal Law Advisor Mary Greer and Legal Analyst Jessie Tannenbaum will travel to Yerevan and work alongside in-country ABA ROLI staff to interview judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, investigators, government officials and non-governmental organization representatives. The resulting report, expected to be published in August 2010, will detail legal and institutional issues affecting pretrial detention and sentencing in Armenia, and will provide the qualitative data and analysis needed to guide future reforms. Following publication, a working group composed of Armenian stakeholders will examine the findings and publish a white paper proposing reforms.
Once piloted, the DPAT will join a series of ABA ROLI tools that assess human trafficking, judicial reform and prosecutorial reform, each of which was developed by our experts in technical legal assistance and criminal law reform.
For more information about our research and assessments office or the DPAT contact rol@staff.abanet.org.