Ms Saoirse Brady:

I do not have the figures, but my colleague, Ms McCormack, might. I do not know if they capture the actual figures of the recidivism rates for CSOs particularly. What all the international evidence would demonstrate is that people who serve prison sentences of 12 months or less are more likely to reoffend in the future because they are not getting the supports. That is in the past. However, now in the context of a prison overcrowding system, people do not even get to the top of queue for assessment for the mental health, addiction or other therapeutic supports they might need in prison before they are back out into community at the bottom of that waiting list. That is what leads to this revolving door of prison.

On the community service orders and some of the points we are making are around that, we think it is a welcome thing that it would be expanded. Judges will welcome that. We have spoken to judges. At the moment, they feel that they do not have enough options open to them. We urge the committee to look at the community sanctions Bill 2014, which would expand the types of options available to judges rather than custodial sentences. This is just one small part of it. The piece around expanding it 480 hours while in theory we welcome this, but in reality if people have care responsibilities, childcare responsibilities, have to make therapeutic appointments and happen to be in employment, the opportunities for them to carry out 480 hours of community service are limited. We will then see a non-completion of community service. Even if they do 320 of those hours, if they do not complete the whole thing there is a risk that they could have to go to prison. It is our concern that not all the supports might be put in place for people to be able to do that. I have spoken to the Probation Service about this.

The high demand for community service happens at the weekends. It will need proper investment to expand the service availability to evenings, to Sundays and to other days. The placements need to be expanded too. At the moment, there are community-based organisations in certain areas, but that will need to be expanded fully. One of the points I would make is that, if you look at budget 2025 last year, the probation service in total got €16 million. The Irish Prison Service got an additional €79 million on top of what it already had. If we really want to expand the alternatives to custody, we need to invest in them properly.

We will come back to the Senator about the recidivism rates. We will look at those and see what the breakdown is. As far as I am aware, there is not a breakdown of community service as opposed to the other probation measures.