Mr. Michael Donnellan:

That is a big issue but there are many reasons people want to serve their sentence behind the door. We like to call it a "restricted regime" rather than solitary confinement. On admission to prison, a number of prisoners will say they want to do their sentence behind the door because they feel at risk being out in the general population because of drug debts or money owed by members of their families outside. Obviously gangland stuff is playing a major issue in the running of our prisons. There is that threat in prisons from people of that persuasion. Of course, there are people with mental health problems. We worked really hard on this in the past number of years to get our number on this restricted regime down, but the Deputy is correct, that on any one day we do a survey of who is behind the door, we will find that there can be eight to 12 people who are only getting two hours out-of-cell time during a 24 hour period. That is for all sorts of complex reasons, violence being the number one reason. Coupled with that is the whole threat that goes with it. It is about trying to manage this disparate group of people in prison and trying to ensure that everybody gets a minimum of two hours out of their cell per day. Of course, the vast majority have a normal regime. There are many complex reasons people are in solitary confinement or on a restricted regime.

When one assesses any case, one will find all of those reasons. There is a prisoner in Cloverhill Remand Prison who will be released in two weeks who will not come out of his cell until the day he is released. Every night I must sign an order that allows him to stay in his cell, rather than physically force him into a regime. He has threatened that he will do damage if he is forced to do so. There are all sorts of reason people want to serve sentences behind a door, but we know how damaging it is. We know about the isolation and psychological damage caused by being in that kind of environment for a prolonged period.