Ms Fíona Ní Chinnéide:

I will be fast. Prison should be a sanction of last resort and reserved for serious offenders. The emphasis should be on exhausting non-custodial alternatives in the community. As a society, we seem to have no problem sending people back to prison repeatedly. The same approach could be taken to community service. If one fails once, the next alternative should not be prison but to try it again. There is a need for more examination of the disproportionate outcomes and difference for women. For example, the community return programme is a very successful programme whereby prisoners serving long sentences can return to the community at the 50% mark to complete their sentences in the community. The statistics are slightly out of date, but approximately 90% of males on the programme successfully complete the programme but there is a 60% return to prison rate for women. That is a big differential and is most likely linked to complex issues such as housing, mental health and addictions, but that has to be examined. It should not just be examined but also addressed. The findings must be acted on.

"Yes" is the answer to an open prison for women, but only within the frame of prison as a last resort. What we do not want is another institution opened that is another residential centre for women who would be better responded to in the community. There is absolute policy consensus that offending by women generally is better responded to in the community.

Finally, I will address the question about the children of people in prison. It is very complex and it is important that we do not talk about it as if it is a predictor, because children are different with different resilience and so forth. What is common among these children is experience of trauma, separation, stigma and poverty. We must support those children to have better outcomes in the long run.