Ms Caron McCaffrey:

The Deputy makes a valid point. Historically, the Prison Service would have seen its role ending when somebody left our custody but, in recent years, we have seen that we have a very important role to play to ensure that when people leave our custody, they have supports in place in the community because we know support is vital to them in terms of not reoffending within the first few months of their exit. We currently arrange to make sure that somebody has a medical card if they are entitled to one, and they get that medical card before they leave custody. We ensure that everybody has access to a social welfare payment and that they know where to go to collect that on the day of their release. We have stopped releasing people on a Friday and over weekends to make sure they can access public services when they are released from our custody. In terms of housing, we have integrated sentence management, ISM, officers who spend a lot of time filling in social housing applications for prisoners who are leaving our custody. However, housing is a very significant challenge within the community.