Dr. Pauline Conroy:

The publication of the heads of the general scheme is a very welcome development. It starts to consolidate some of the human rights to which people deprived of their liberty are entitled.

Visiting committees are a particular kind of structure. We monitor, not inspect, the activities of prisons and speak directly to the prisoners. We are in and out of the prisons constantly. That could be weekly, fortnightly or monthly. In these interactions with the prisoners we try to be impartial and independent. We also try to listen very carefully to them because we are possibly the only independent people prisoners will meet on the landings of their prisons or in their cells. Ours is a very humane but nevertheless rights-based approach. We represent the views and voices of prisoners and the conditions of the prison estate.

That is why we are concerned about some of the proposals that would have visiting committees dropping into prisons once every three months. A visit of two or three hours once a month or every three months would not reveal very much. We would not be able to observe how frequently mattresses are being placed on the floor for prisoners to sleep on. We would not be able to observe if prisoners are showing signs of enduring mental illness, which is visible when we attempt to talk to them.

Our submission primarily addresses head 13, which goes into some detail on visiting committees and proposes an entirely new structure to that which we have at the moment.

Prison visiting committees have been in existence for almost 100 years. It is quite obvious that they need reform, but we are not sure that we should throw out the baby with the bath water. There are elements of the work of visiting committees which are useful and valuable, and are appreciated by prison governors. Prison governors, who are not mentioned at all in the proposed Bill, have a significant role to play as managers and under law, but we do not see them in the general scheme. A visiting committee can provide independent and systematic observations on the prison system and, in particular, unexpected consequences of changes in rules or policy and changes in the composition of the prison population, for example, whether more prisoners are on remand rather than sentenced. At the moment, about four out ten are on remand. This poses big questions as to whether opportunities for rehabilitation are going to be made available. These prisoners do not know if they are going to be sentenced or how. This disrupts, but it is an unexpected consequence of the judicial system for the prisons.