Ms Pauline McCabe:

I will start with the overcrowding issue because it also relates to what Mr. Doherty asked about the prison reform process. I should say, for the purposes of clarification, that there are no republican prisoners sharing cells in case I misled the Mr. Doherty in any way because he made that comment. It is in the integrated population that prisoners are sharing.

On the issue of overcrowding, which sits with the issue of why we are where we are with prisoner reform, some of it comes back to the level of political priority that it is given. We recognise that, being brutal, the public in Northern Ireland at the moment is interested in a whole ream of things, and prisons and prisoners are low down the list. There are not many jurisdictions where it is much different. One of the things we have been keen to do in the past five years is to encourage public debate. It would be entirely fair to say that the publication of our death-in-custody investigations have achieved much media coverage and have opened up all sorts of debates that had not taken place previously where people started to think more about what happens in prisons, what we are trying to achieve and what comes out of prison. Those things are helpful but we have a long way to go. There must be an absolute will to do it. Sometimes those in offices such as mine feel that they work and fight incredibly hard for what is achieved.

I wish to respond to the question on overcrowding. I made the point earlier, and I feel incredibly strongly about this, that we have had the three major problems for a long time, and sometimes I get incredibly frustrated at how long it takes to change things. We are still sending fine defaulters to prison. Everyone in Northern Ireland - all the political parties - are aware that we are sending fine defaulters to prison. We are now into our second if not third pilot study to find out what we are going to do about sending such people to prison. Everyone everywhere knows it is an utter and total waste of time and money and that there are much more effective ways of dealing with fine default. It is one third of all committals across the prison estate and it is one half of women prisoners. In one year in which a report was carried out, one woman went to prison for non-payment of a dog licence. This is in circumstances where prisons are trying to deliver a prison reform programme, with limited resources and limited money, and we are trying to support their efforts. In excess of £3,000 is required for every single one of those committals and it is achieving nothing in terms of the overall objective.

The second area of difficulty relates to delays in the criminal justice system. When I was on the policing board ten years ago, we got the first report from the criminal justice inspector about delays in the criminal justice system. Ten years on, it has not changed one jot. The prison is still stuffed with people on remand who, as has rightly been said, might be found innocent. Prisoners on remand are in prison for far too long. Again, that has a massive impact. It also has a massive impact on the task of reform because of what one can do with remand prisoners versus what one can do with prisoners who have been committed. All sorts of issues must be confronted.

The third crucial issue on which there has been much recent debate is people serving short sentences for non-violent crimes. The committee had a presentation recently on restorative justice. In Northern Ireland, the performance of the restorative youth justice and probation service is rather good. We know for sure that it can work if we invest properly and manage properly community disposal so that it is individually needs-driven and the package contains restorative justice where appropriate and community service where appropriate. We examine mental health issues, addiction issues, finance issues, housing issues and family support issues. We know that if we effectively deal with those issues and address them, we can achieve a much better chance of someone not re-offending than if we send them to prison. All of those things are contributing massively to overcrowding. My view is that it is completely within our gift to deal with those matters, if the political will exists to do it. The justice Minister is really pushing forward pieces of work to try to achieve change but it does sometimes feel as if it takes a very long time.

Mr. Doherty asked me about the parole commission. I do not feel that I can helpfully answer those questions. In my experience, every case is different. Each time we get a case, we go to great pains to look at every aspect of it that is relevant. We do a factual, evidence-based, objective and impartial report with appropriate recommendations, but I must have a complaint in order to be able to investigate it. In my experience, to comment on any case where one has not had a chance to do the investigation oneself and look at all of the evidence is generally not helpful. I fully understand the issues that are being raised. They are questions that must be put to others. Where I get a complaint I am very zealous about investigating it.

On full body searching, I will first come back to the comments made about the drugs problem. The point was made that republican prisoners are rarely if ever found with drugs. Whenever we look at the issue, we speak to the prisoners and the prison service, and we look at all of the relevant issues. One of the difficulties the prison service will express, which we understand, is that even though republican prisoners say they do not use drugs and the evidence might support that, they also do not co-operate with drugs testing. The problem they face is that if it was acceptable for a group of prisoners to say they do not use drugs but they will not co-operate with drugs testing then, arguably, any other group within the prison could say the same and this would give rise to all sorts of issues relating to the treatment of different groups. There are prisoners who can remain drugs-free for a period in order to create a situation where subsequently they might have the ability to use drugs or get other people to bring in drugs. That argument is often used. I fully understand why people feel that it might seem unjust but it does have wider implications in terms of the total prison population. The extent to which drugs, medicine abuse and bullying underpin efforts to try to rehabilitate and create a purposeful regime cannot be exaggerated. I would put it high on the list of priorities to be tackled robustly.

Against that, I cannot emphasise too strongly that we should do everything we humanly can to make sure that searches are as least intrusive as possible. It is appropriate for me to mention that at one stage some time ago I did get a number of reports from republican prisoners about full body searching. We investigated them fully and we looked at the relevant CCTV footage. As a result of the investigation we found that the searches were being carried out broadly in compliance with prison service policy. Republican prisoners say that carrying them out in compliance with prison service policy still constitutes physical abuse and sexual abuse. We acknowledge everyone’s position and point of view in our reports. What we did see is that the manner in which the searches were carried out, the quality of communication, respectfulness and everything else meant that there were better and less preferable ways of carrying out full body searching. We made a series of recommendations on foot of those reports that we should always apply prison service policy in line with best practice and what the best people were doing. They were fully accepted and a number of changes were made at the time to make sure that the recommendations were consistently applied. It does not change the facts and I fully understand the principle Deputy Crowe made that some people believe there should not be searches. My aim in terms of the wider picture is to find a technological solution that could detect drugs being brought in under any circumstances. That would be the ideal scenario.