Ms Pauline McCabe:

Thank you. I have, as asked, prepared an overview. Having presented it, I will be very happy to answer detailed questions. I thought it would be helpful and relevant to describe the role of the Prisoner Ombudsman and to consider certain issues regarding the context in which I do my job. The contextual issues are very relevant to the question on which the committee has expressed an interest. The office of the Northern Ireland Prisoner Ombudsman was established in February 2005 to help to manage recognised tensions in prisons by ensuring that prisoners with problems or concerns had an appropriate and effective way to deal with them. It follows that in order to be effective, it is vital that there is full confidence in the independence and integrity of my office. The ombudsman role is, therefore, fully independent of the prison service. It is important to emphasise that the Prisoner Ombudsman is not a prisoner advocacy service. Our function is to carry out independent, fair and impartial investigations and to make recommendations for change where appropriate.

The office carries out two types of investigation, the first being the investigation of eligible prisoner complaints. In order for a complaint to be eligible for consideration by the ombudsman, it must first have been considered through the prison service's internal complaints process. The complaints we consider cover a wide range of areas, many with underpinning human rights obligations. These can include, inter alia, alleged assaults, bullying and discrimination complaints, regime issues, the prisoner privilege scheme, the use of control and restraint processes, cell-sharing arrangements, the use of spars in safer cells, the conduct of adjudications and the application of punishments. We are also involved in issues related to the investigation of serious incidents and prisoner transport.

Over the last five years, we have taken a number of steps to ensure the office provides an accessible and effective service and to build confidence in our independence and the integrity of our investigations. I can describe those steps in more detail if members are interested. Last year, the office received 373 eligible complaints from across the prison estate, which level of demand has continued this year.

It is worth noting that this has been achieved in circumstances in which the office still has not been placed on a statutory footing, although the present Minister of Justice has given a firm commitment to take this forward now.

The Prisoner Ombudsman also investigates all deaths in prison custody. These investigations help the State achieve its investigative obligation arising under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights by ensuring that, as far as possible, the full facts are brought to light and any lessons from a death are learned. The aims of the investigation are to establish the circumstances of the death, to examine whether any change in operational methods, policy and practice or management arrangements would help prevent recurrence of such a serious incident, to inform the Coroner's inquest and to address any concerns of the bereaved family. In the past five years my office has completed and reported on 24 death-in-custody investigations and we are currently investigating a further seven deaths and also carrying out our first near-death investigation. Clearly, many issues connected to the care and protection of vulnerable prisoners and particularly those at risk of self-harm or suicide are at the heart of these investigations. My staff are regularly in and out of Northern Ireland prisons and have full access to information required in connection with our investigations. There is no doubt that this, along with the publication of our death-in-custody investigation reports at an early stage, makes a significant contribution to bringing openness and transparency to the relatively closed world of prisons. There is therefore significant media interest in our work, and obviously the way we do our work is relevant to the protection of human rights.

Areas of concern identified by Prisoner Ombudsman investigations and related recommendations may have a significant impact on the rights and treatment of prisoners in different situations and circumstances. Well over 90% of all Prisoner Ombudsman recommendations are now fully accepted and a recent example of the impact they can have is the root and branch reform of the issue and supervision of prisoner medication which is currently under way.

The context in which we do our job has significant implications, not only for how we operate but also for the challenge of prison reform in Northern Ireland. The experience of the conflict, in which 29 prison officers were killed and many others seriously injured - sadly, that figure becomes 30 when we include the tragic death of Officer David Black last year - has significantly shaped current service delivery in Northern Ireland prisons. During the conflict the function of the prison service was primarily security-focused, with prison staff reluctant to engage with prisoners in any meaningful way. It is a legacy of the conflict that the emphasis over the years remained on security and that the attitude and approach of staff did not adapt to the needs of a changing prison population. As a result, the culture and approach to management, work practices and industrial relations reflect a different time. The ratio of prison staff to prisoners in Northern Ireland is more than double that in England and Wales.

In April 1998 the Good Friday Agreement, as the committee is well aware, provided for fundamental reform of the substantially Protestant police service in order to build cross-community confidence in policing. It was my privilege to be a member of the first policing board in Northern Ireland. The peace agreement did not, however, provide for reform of the prison service. There is no doubt that over the years the prison service has made efforts to try to deliver a more humane prisoner-focused regime, but the returns on investment in terms of the effort made, in the absence of a serious overarching commitment and plan, have been limited. It is only now, following the devolution of criminal justice matters to Northern Ireland, that serious efforts are being made to take forward prison reform. At the heart of those efforts is the belief that while security is and always will be an important function of prisons, the need to deliver a purposeful regime that achieves real change in offending behaviour is equally important. It is worth noting also that at the time of the Hillsborough Agreement the actual cost of keeping someone in prison in Northern Ireland was £90,000 per prisoner per year.

The second area of context that fundamentally affects the way we do our job and the challenge of reform is the health and social characteristics of the 1,800-plus prisoner population. In the general population 2% of children are excluded from school, but 49% of male and 33% of female prisoners were excluded from school. In Northern Ireland there is 6.5% unemployment, but more than 70% of prisoners are unemployed at the time of committal. In the general population 5% of men and 2% of women suffer from two or more mental disorders, but 72% of male and 70% of female prisoners are estimated to suffer from two or more mental disorders, while 62% of prisoners are estimated to have a personality disorder. In the general population around 13% of men will have used drugs in the past year, but 66% of men in prison are likely to have done so. Similar statistics relating to literacy and numeracy levels, qualifications, prisoners taken into care as children and so on tell much the same story. It is worth noting that one-third of all committals in Northern Ireland and half of all committals of women are for non-payment of fines. It costs well over £3,000 to process each fine defaulter through the system for their average four-day stay. The human face of these statistics took me by surprise when I became Prisoner Ombudsman, particularly when dealing with young offenders and when investigating deaths in prison custody.

Following the Hillsborough Agreement, a comprehensive review of the Northern Ireland Prison Service was carried out by a team under the chairmanship of Anne Owers. The resulting report identified significant and long-lasting problems in Northern Ireland and called for a programme of change and a transformation-of-culture approach to working practices. It emphasised that incremental improvements are not enough and stated that there needs to be a determined cross-party approach to driving through the whole package of change. It is fair to say, not least because of the financial imperative, that there is now a general acceptance in Northern Ireland of the need for prison reform, and the Minister for Justice is wholeheartedly committed to delivering this. The Owers review did not, however, result in the production of a Patton-style implementation plan and has not enjoyed the resourcing and financial investment that underpinned policing reform, not least because its specific goal is to reduce substantially the cost of the prison service. The absence of the early production of a coherent, joined-up plan with key activities properly sequenced has limited the progress made to date and the return on the money that has been invested in kick-starting reform. Nevertheless, severance and recruitment programmes are well under way. A new, more fit-for-purpose operating model and shift patterns have been agreed but are not yet fully implemented. Additionally, a change team with responsibility for producing a forward plan is now in place.

Some progress has been made towards cultural change and the emphasis of the new staff training programme is on positive engagement and problem solving. A key objective is to achieve a critical mass of staff in each prison who are committed to the delivery of a rehabilitative regime. The new director general is determined to modernise the service and has achieved agreement to make some significant new appointments. These are welcome developments, but the full impact has yet to be felt on the ground and prisoner lock-downs continue to be a problem right across the prison estate. High staff sickness absence levels have done nothing to mitigate these problems. There is much still to do and a number of factors are significantly affecting the quality of the regime offered to prisoners. Crucially, the progress of the work required under the prison reform programme to deliver adequate and consistent purposeful rehabilitative activity for prisoners is well behind what is required. This includes the provision of education and skills training, work experience, behavioural change programmes, exercise and leisure activities and a wide range of other activities and interventions that can help motivate prisoners to change offending behaviour and prepare for release. There are far too many prisoners with not enough to do. This has an impact on vulnerability, drug and medicine abuse and prison safety, and undermines their capacity for rehabilitation. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the prison population is increasing.

The prison review team has emphasised the need to take urgent action to implement alternatives to custody for fine defaulters and those receiving short sentences for non-violent crimes. It has also emphasised the need to address the greater delays in the criminal justice system than those experienced in England, Wales and here, and such delays impact substantially on the difficulty in providing a quality regime. This problem is particularly acute at Maghaberry Prison where at any one time up to 55% of the prisoners are on remand. The total percentage of the remand population is significantly lower than in England, Wales and Scotland. I understand that is the position here as well. It is our view that the programmes of work examining these issues must be addressed with much greater urgency than has been shown up to now.

There is growing political and community support for the delivery of an efficient and cost-effective prison service. The prison review team has provided a comprehensive blueprint for the change required. The commitment at the top of the prison service and the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust to the delivery of the necessary changes is not in doubt. Some steps have been taken to put some important building blocks in place and this is having some positive impact on the treatment of prisoners. There is, however, a need for a fully joined-up implementation plan for the future and there is also an urgent need to address several areas where a lack of progress to date could seriously undermine the potential of the change programme.

As a result of action taken by the Northern Ireland Minister for Justice, there are now no under 18s in our prisons. This was something for which we and others have lobbied hard and it is a welcome development. I would be happy to assist with any questions.