Professor Guatam Gulati:

I thank the Deputy for the question. If I understand her correctly, she asked how we prevent trans-institutionalisation. The most important part in preventing trans-institutionalisation is recognising the presence of a disability. This is best done at the points of entry into a pathway. This includes asylum seekers in the reception process, people accessing homelessness services, at the point they enter homelessness services, and, more specifically, in prisons. Nearly one in three people in Irish prisons screen positive for an intellectual disability. Diversion programs have been ongoing for more than a decade, but in clinical practice, there is a large number of people with intellectual disabilities. To impact that, one has to recognise the disability and intervene at the start of the pathway, which is the arrest and custody stage or maybe even the pre-arrest stage. It is for the gardaí to recognise the presence of disability and perhaps think of a non-criminal justice response.

That is likely to impact significantly the prevalence of people with intellectual disabilities in the Irish prison system. We conducted a study in which we brought together the views from multiple other studies of nearly 1,200 people with intellectual disabilities where they encountered police forces around the world. It made for troubling reading in that people with intellectual disabilities say they feel confused, frightened and perplexed and have great difficulty communicating at the point when they are arrested or are in police custody. When we repeated the same study looking at the views of nearly 1,000 police officers from multiple countries around the world, all of them said the same thing: they need more training because they need to be able to recognise the disability. Recognising the disability at the start of a pathway is the way to prevent trans-institutionalisation. I hope that answers the Deputy's question.