David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

A great deal has happened and many of the report's recommendations have been addressed but it is now out of date. For example, at the time the number in prison was 4,275 whereas today the number is 3,780. We recommended that numbers should be reduced and, thankfully, they have come down. Will the Minister of State convey to his colleagues that if these reports are to be any use, they should be debated within six months of publication and sooner than that if possible?

The sub-committee heard from a wide variety of people who are expert in the area and five recommendations were made. The first was a reduction in prisoner numbers and that is happening. We strongly recommended the adoption of a decarceration strategy and a declared intention by the Government to reduce the prison population by one third over a ten year period. Many witnesses were critical of what they considered to be short sentences. They said they do not work and that people emerging from prison are more criminalised than previously and have less incentive not to reoffend or to manage their lifestyle.

The second recommendation was to commute prison sentences of less than six months. The report states all sentences for under six months imprisonment imposed in respect of non-violent offences should be commuted and replaced with community service orders. We produced a further report on community courts following a study of work in New York and we were impressed with them. The Government has since published a review of penal reform and that is one of the recommendations. Has the Minister for Justice and Equality progressed this further?

We also made a recommendation about increasing standard remission from one quarter to one third and the introduction of an incentivised remission scheme of up to one half. Throughout the hearings and submissions, contributors emphasised the need for incentivised or earned remission. That means people who could have their sentences shortened would have to earn remission either through good behaviour or by taking part in structured programmes within the Prison Service. The difficulty that has emerged is the service needs more resources to provide these programmes.

The fourth recommendation is the introduction of legislation providing for structured release, temporary release, parole and community return. The Irish Penal Reform Trust recommended a Bill which would set out the basis for a structured release system to include changes to remission, temporary release and parole and the sub-committee recommended that the Bill could also provide the statutory framework for an expanded community return programme.

The final recommendation is to address prison conditions and overcrowding and increase the use of open prisons.

When we went to Finland, we were very impressed with its open prisons and the use of electronic tagging for instance. In one prison, prisoners went to work or college during the day and came back to the prison at night. In Finland and in other jurisdictions the number of people in prison came down and crime rates also fell.

All the people who made submissions to us said the issue is very complex. It was said that short sentences do more harm than good. The report highlighted that the vast majority of people in prison come from disadvantaged or poor areas. That is not to say that everyone from poor areas will have a criminal background or anything like that, far from it. Addiction and mental health issues pose a major challenge. Representatives of the Prison Officers Association said that it is mostly poor people from deprived areas who end up in prisons. Some of these people spend most of their 20s and 30s in and out of the system.

Other challenges include overcrowding, drug misuse, violence and mental health problems. Some of the proposals were to have an incentivised regime for prisoners, more semi-open facilities, electronic tagging and so forth. The Irish Penal Reform Trust stated that remission was a blunt instrument but there was a potential for it to contribute to a more incentivised system. If we have a more incentivised system it would work better.

We dealt with the idea that temporary release needed to be earned. We need to bear in mind that there are very dangerous people who need to be taken out of circulation for the good and safety of society. The committee is not suggesting we would not do that, it has to be done.

We also need to recognise some very good work that is ongoing. The Cornmarket project in Wexford was established in 1999. It deals with people who have little or no motivation to change. These are the hardest people to engage with. Those working on the project enhance offender motivation to make positive behavioural changes. They use a very complex psychological approach. I visited the centre and representatives of the centre appeared before the committee. The project is very worthwhile and interesting. Perhaps it should be used in different parts of the country. I encourage the Minister of State or even the Minister for Justice and Equality to visit the centre to see its good work and the impact it is having on people who have little or no motivation to change. These are the most challenging of people.

Representatives of Focus Ireland also made a presentation. They spoke about managing the release of prisoners so that they do not fall into homelessness and fall back into their old ways. Care After Prison in Dublin does amazing work. Representatives of that organisation made a very good presentation to us. They are involved in information, support, counselling, place of contact and family support. They make contact with prisoners before they leave prison and support them after they come out. They reported that they had a 100% success rate of non-reoffending. A small input of resources can give a massive outcome. That organisation gets about 20 inquiries per week for help.

The need for an integrated plan for offenders was mentioned on a few occasions. Also mentioned was the need for a sentencing council and the Minister of State might be able to enlighten us as to what has happened. It is an area that would involve the Judiciary and so on. It has been repeatedly looked at and it needs to be brought forward.

On 24 October, Professor Ian O'Donnell told us that temporary release should be structured and tailored and should not be a safety valve to ease overcrowding. There is a perception that temporary release only happens to address the issue of overcrowding. However, it should be structured, tailored and planned. Life sentence prisoners who are released on licence today will have spent a decade longer in custody than their counterparts in the early 1980s. So the idea that we have gone soft on this is wrong.

The need for judicial training was repeatedly highlighted by those making submissions. Another statistic that jumped out at us was that 50% of those who are released find themselves back in prison within four years.

I emphasise the need for a community court system. People involved in low-level offences come before the court the following day and most of the time get a community service order. They also get support - psychological, social, housing, health and so forth. They are monitored and if they stay out of trouble for six months their records are sealed. That was introduced in New York. Committee members went there and sat with the judges on the bench to see the system working. We met the people involved, both the offenders and those administering the system. It works very well and it is one of the reasons the crime rate in New York has reduced so much. They talk about zero tolerance; this is it in action. The people there told us it works.

I again call for such a system to be established in Dublin on a pilot basis. While it needs to be tailored for a particular place, after a period of time if it is seen to work here, we should introduce it nationally. If it works in New York it could work here. However, we cannot just transplant the New York model here. It has to be developed specifically tailored to conditions here. In some jurisdictions, for instance in east Jutland, prisoners with three months remaining to serve and who ask for drug treatment are guaranteed to get that within two weeks. That treatment is full-time. One third of the prisons there are dedicated to full-time drug treatment for as long as possible.

I acknowledge the great work of Deputy Finian McGrath in the area of gangland crime and producing a report on that. That report and this other report have highlighted the damage caused by drug use. At a recent committee meeting it was highlighted that we did not have a Minister of State dedicated to drugs. In the past we had such a Minister of State working across a number of Departments. The Minister for Health is doing great work in this area. However, we also need to link up the Departments of Justice and Equality, Health, Education and Skills, Social Protection, the Environment, Community and Local Government and so on because this is extraordinarily complex. As I said earlier, most people in our prisons come from deprived areas, and many of them have drug treatment issues and mental health problems. This is complicated and we need to put more into it.

I refer to the submission the Irish Association for the Social Integration of Offenders, IASIO, made to the committee. It works with all categories of offenders, including high-risk offenders, people convicted of sexual offences and so on. Its Linkage programme is funded by the Probation Service. This is another very good programme that needs further support.

The report has highlighted that it is not just what happens in the prisons that counts. Also important are front-door policies and backdoor policies, when people initially go in and when they come out at the other end.

Things are improving with temporary release, overcrowding, prison conditions and so on. Mountjoy is now fully equipped with in-cell sanitation. We visited Mountjoy, Wheatfield and Cork prisons. Cork Prison is probably one of the most appalling places I have ever been in. Thankfully a new prison is being built in Cork. The pressure on the prison officers and the prisoners was palpable. One would have to visit it to understand.

I am pleased that a new prison is being built and that prisoner numbers are reducing but we have more to do. It is evident from Deputy McGrath's work that we need to focus more on communities that are under pressure, experiencing deprivation and are poorly resourced. If we do this, in conjunction with implementing the recommendations of this report, we will succeed in further reducing our prisoner numbers.

It costs approximately €65,000 per annum to keep a person in prison. This cost may be greater in some cases and less in others. Some of this funding could be used to support implementation of some of the initiatives put forward in this report and proposed by experts such as Dr. Ciaran McCullagh and Fr. McVerry.

The committee also held hearings with agencies such as Care After Prison, the Cornmarket Project, Focus Ireland, the Irish Prison Service, the Probation Service, the Inspector of Prisons, the Parole Board, Dr. Kevin Warner, Professor Ian O'Donnell, all of whom are doing great work in this area. It also met with representatives of the Etruscan Life and Training Education Centre, which provides services for people who present with anger-related aggression, drug and alcohol behavioural issues and so on. Its programmes are very powerful. There is a great deal of work doing on but it needs greater support. If we could divert funding from imprisonment of people to keeping people out of prison we would do far better.

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