Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 8 March 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality

Penal Reform: Discussion (Resumed)

9:00 am

Photo of Frances BlackFrances Black (Independent) | Oireachtas source

That is something to think about, namely, specifically training staff to understand the impact of addiction, but it is also important for them to learn how to cope with those in the chaos of addiction. We only ran three programmes because the funding ran out. Unfortunately, education which is very important for prisoners got in the way of the programmes we were running. Many of the women had been born into homes where there was an addiction. What we tried to do was to help them to understand why they were suffering from an addiction and to find compassion for themselves so as not to constantly beat themselves up about being a bad person because they had an addiction. That is from where I am coming. Unfortunately, the education programme got in the way of that work. What I mean is that the women had to go to their education classes in order to get certificates that would be good for them following release. Would it be a good idea to prioritise addiction services and recovery and provide certificates for attendance at therapeutic instead of education programmes? I do not say education is not good because it is very important, but, unfortunately, it got in the way of some of the therapeutic elements of the programmes we ran.

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