Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

-----and it is something we should do here. The Care After Prison group put it up to us - to borrow a phrase Senator Zappone used in saying the witnesses have put it up to us - that because it is very hard to provide structured release programmes of any sort for people serving very short sentences, which they put at six months or less, that instead of considering remission and so on should we provide that people serving that length of sentence should be diverted altogether? There is an attractiveness to that because many of these people, to return to Dr. McCullagh's point on public order offences, are in prison for those offences. They pose a minimal risk if they have received a sentence of six months or less for a non-violent offence. There are examples from elsewhere of diversion in that sort of case, are there not? Are they effective?