Mr. John Clinton:

It does make sense, absolutely. Any form of training that improves their skills set would obviously be very beneficial to prison officers and things have changed and improved in that regard; there is no point in me saying otherwise. When I joined the prison service, I was given nine week's basic training and then on the following Saturday, I was straight in and on duty. Nowadays, we have the Higher Certificate in Custodial Care, HCCC, which is a third level course and is far better designed to equip a person with the skills set for the job. That said, the Senator is quite right that we do need more of that type of training. The more training one has, the more one understands the situation around one. It helps the prison officers and, more importantly, it helps the people they are dealing with too. We would encourage anything that the committee could do to help in terms of improving training for prison officers because it is a very challenging environment. Prison officers are working with people who do not want to be in prison and there are huge addiction problems. It is a very challenging job and every tool that we can be provided with to assist us would be more than welcome. We would be hopeful that this committee will make some recommendations in that regard.

On the Villabona project, I did not actually get over to Spain to see it first-hand because there were some internal difficulties between the prison and the Spanish government in terms of allowing us to go in to see it. However, I went to see a project which is based on a similar concept in Grendon prison in the UK. What they do there is to normalise prison to the greatest extent possible. There were two prison officers running the project when I visited. One of them was actually the chairman of the local Prison Officer's Association branch and was very helpful to us. They sit down in a group every day with the prisoners on the project and have very intense counselling sessions. That happens from the time the prisoners get up in the morning until the afternoon, when they have recreation. I actually sat in on one of the sessions myself. I had to get the permission of the prisoners engaged in the project to do so. They allowed me to sit in on it and it was very beneficial. Mr. Eoin Carroll, who was here earlier, was with me on the day. The prisoners speak very openly and honestly. The project is designed around the concepts of non-violence and normalisation. For example, prisoners call the prison officers by their first names, which is not a common occurrence in the Irish prison system. Small things like that make a difference.

In Spain, Mr. Faustino Zapico García, has developed the concept much more. I got a booklet sent over which was in Spanish and I had it translated. I have met Mr. García on a number of occasions and he explains the project very well. Put simply, it is about normalisation and prisoners taking ownership of their own situation. That is combined with the provision of excellent supports, as is the case in Grendon prison. The flaw I saw in the Grendon prison project was that when prisoners finished the course, they were sent back into the normal prison estate, which was nonsensical. Prisoners lived for up to two years in the project environment and came around fully. Some of them would have been big, heavy members of a criminal gang but they were sent back to the criminal gang in the main prison. Peer pressure from the gang then dragged them back into the old way of life straight away. It would have to be designed so that when prisoners come out of a project environment, they are either sent to an open centre or a semi-open centre and not back onto the wings of the regular prison. The concept is excellent and it would be well worth the committee's while to visit Spain to see it in action. It brings in all of the issues that Senator Black referred to, like addiction training and so forth.