Dr. Emma Regan:

Those 18- to 24-year-olds have been a particular focus for us in the psychology service, that is people who are serving a sentence of one year or more and do not have compulsory supervision orders to support them in the community. They are the people who drop off once they have served their sentence. They meet one of the 14 assistant psychologists in the prison system very quickly to build an understanding of why they have come into custody. Often when we first meet them they do not have any understanding of that. They cannot join the dots of what has happened to them throughout their lives so we focus on that to develop a bespoke sentence plan for each person. Much of the feedback from international reports on young people is that they need a bespoke sentence plan while they are in custody. That is what the assistant psychologist does with young people. They carry that sentence plan around with them for the rest of their sentence. It targets the key areas as necessary, whether it be addiction or mental health, and they get ongoing support on a monthly basis from the assistant psychologist to keep them on track.