Mr. Brian Dack:

In this jurisdiction we would use some actuarial risk assessments as well as clinical judgment to make decisions on how we deal with people because the research tells us that those who pose the greater risk demand greater intervention and greater concentration and those who are of a lower risk are dealt with in what we call a single agency way. They would have either a probation officer or a Garda case manager dealing with them and they would not be part of the SORAM process.

We use two risk assessments in particular. There is a static risk assessment called the risk matrix 2000, RM2000, which is based on historical information and that enables us to have a baseline categorisation in terms of low, medium, high or very high risk of reoffending over a longer period of time.

Then we go into what we call the stable and acute risk assessment. Going back to Deputy O'Callaghan's point about the causation, that risk assessment is much more intensive and it takes place with the offender over a series of interviews. It looks at a whole range of issues such as the offender's capacity for relationships, their hostility towards women for example, whether they are impulsive in nature and whether they have good problem solving skills. It then looks at the issue of sex and whether their sex drive and preoccupation with sex is a factor underlining their offending, whether they use sex as a coping mechanism and whether they have deviant sexual preferences.

That information is garnered and we use collateral information as well. We look at the book of evidence from An Garda Síochána, we work with the family of the offender where possible and if they have been in prison we liaise with our psychology colleagues in the Irish Prison Service and our integrated sentence managers and that enables us to build up a full picture. It is based on a relationship as our colleagues said so the better the relationship that we have with the offender, the greater the quality of information we have and that gives us the ability to target particular areas. An assessment is not just there to give a label and a category but the benefit of it is to figure out what the case management plan should be and what are the areas that we need to target which will ensure there is no reoffending in the future and that there are no victims.

We do that with An Garda Síochána and with our colleagues in the local authorities and in Tusla. We are all trained together and indeed some of our colleagues recently went up to Northern Ireland to train some of the Police Authority for Northern Ireland, PANI, people in the RM2000. There is a lot of co-operation between us but it would not be in isolation. Frequently and on an ongoing basis, it would be a member of An Garda Síochána and a probation officer who jointly meet with the offender and as much as possible it is a collaborative effort with the offender to move forward.