Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for not being here earlier as I was in the House. I have watched part of the meeting online. I want to touch on what Ms Gavin said. I endorse what she said about prison sentences having nothing to do with what the media think they should be. This is why we have judges sentencing and not the media. The Minister for Justice has made proposals on minimum sentences to be served. I am happy for this to happen as long as it is a judge who makes that decision and not a civil servant or somebody else. This is why I do not agree with what Senator McDowell said earlier about the heat of the moment. The reason we have judges passing sentences is that we can trust them to remove themselves from the passion of the moment.

Everybody has mentioned victims. Victims are an increasingly important part of the system. This is why we have new laws at European and national level to protect victims. To my mind, rehabilitation has to be the primary function of our prison service and our penal service. Other functions with regard to punishment and retribution have their place. Unlike places such as Saudi Arabia, where victims get to decide what the penalty should be, we do not have that approach here for good reason, namely, the emotion involved.

With regard to deterrence, I have my doubts about the deterrent effect of any penalty. Nobody goes out to commit a crime expecting to be caught. People do not contemplate the consequences of the action. The benefit that comes with rehabilitation is that it prevents the creation of future victims. This is the importance of it. Another point on which I disagree with Senator McDowell is Thornton Hall. I do not think building new prison spaces or building more and more prison spaces is the answer. If we build a space it will be filled and that would have a negative effect.

I want to come back to what Ms McCaffrey said about open prisons. There is enormous capacity for us to increase the 6% of the prison population in open prisons that was mentioned by Deputy Daly. The rehabilitative process is important. There is also an institutionalisation that comes, particularly with high-security prisons. In my other role, I have dealt with clients who cannot open doors. When we go to court they have been so long in prison they cannot open the door to the courtroom. This level of institutionalisation is absolutely undesirable and flies in the face of the notion of rehabilitation. Open prisons are a way to deal with this.

I am very conscious of what Mr. Graham said about how tough it has been for prisoners, whether in open or closed prisons, during Covid. I congratulate the Irish Prison Service on what it did to keep prisoners safe during that time. I also recognise just how hard it has been for people who had no physical contact with anyone in their family. They had no face-to-face contact for two years. That is incredibly difficult. Mr. Graham spoke about not being able to hold his mother. That is heartbreaking. There are people the length and breadth of the country in this position.

I want to ask a question about young offenders. For first-time offenders and young people going into the prison system, what is the number one measure the witnesses would recommend we take? Should this group be separated from the general prison population? Should first-time offenders never mix with somebody who has served multiple periods in prison? I have seen young offender institutions in other jurisdictions where they are separated. They are taught skills. They are in specific programmes to help them. What is the number one thing we could do to help prevent young offenders coming back into the system?