Ms Fíona Ní Chinnéide:

I want to echo all of that and to outline one overarching theme. There is a contradiction at the heart of the criminal justice system if we are telling people they must reform but, at the same time, that they can never forget. We need to recognise when people have moved on and demonstrated they have desisted from offending behaviour. Another area of research is called "time to redemption" studies. This is where an examination of when a previous criminal record still holds a predictive value on future offending. This actually reduces over time and, on average, it is seven to ten years, beyond which the information is no longer relevant. Therefore, in terms of predicting future offending, after that period it is the same as for somebody who has never been convicted of an offence. While this would not be palatable, an argument can be made that all offences should be able to become spent at some time in the future following a longer rehabilitative period and, in fact, that is the case in many countries across Europe. We are starting from a very conservative space on these two islands. I echo what Senator Ruane said. We need to focus on the relevance of this information into the future across all categories.