Ms Caron McCaffrey:

The difficulty is that a lot of people in our custody have significant addiction issues and mental health issues, and while they might get treatment during a custodial sentence, they live very chaotic lives on the outside and accessing public services would be a difficulty. From a Prison Service perspective, the longer somebody is with us, the more we can work with them to ensure we address the underlying issues that are giving rise to them coming into contact with the criminal justice system in the first place. We have a great psychology service and our work training and education are very important. More recently, in May last year, an education task force was established. One of the things we are specifically looking at is increasing the level of educational qualifications that we give to prisoners in custody, but also making the transition from education in prison to the community. We are also looking at providing apprenticeships within a prison setting in order that we would be in a position to give people an apprenticeship, and when they go out, they would have access to high-paid, good quality employment. We know that having access to employment is a key factor in terms of not returning to custody.