Ms Niamh McCormack:

A lot of the time, people in remand custody, particularly women, are there because they cannot afford to pay their bail bond or because the judge does not want to release them out into homelessness. There is a huge issue of prisons dealing with issues in society that will not be dealt with by anyone else. The complicated issue is that further upstream supports need to be provided for people who commit what are essentially poverty crimes - people who steal groceries, those who commit stealing-for-survival crimes and people in active addiction. Those people need supports, particularly at the point of remand custody. A lot of them commit really minor offences. They go through a revolving door.