Ms Sarahjane McCreery:

To add to what Ms Brady said, in the Making Rights Real for People with Disabilities in Prison report, prisoners spoke of a lack of information in the form of Braille, audiovisual information and easy-to-read language. That applies not just to the prison rules but also to all types of information pertaining to what goes on in prisons, like the prison regime and how to navigate the prison. That information was extremely inaccessible for the 16 prisoners in the report. On vindicating rights, the IPRT always flags the need for an effective complaints mechanism in prisons, and that is really important to flag again now. In our report, people in prison with disabilities noted they were afraid to make a complaint to the complaints system in case they received ill-treatment by the prison officers they were complaining about. A lot of the time that was related to disability discrimination, which is really problematic. We have been calling for it for a very long time, but an effective complaints mechanism needs to be in place in prisons and currently it is not. It has been under review for a long time now and it has been promised but we need it effective immediately and not just for people with disabilities but for everybody.