Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We would welcome the placing of the Parole Board on a statutory footing and making it independent of the Government. We welcome the Bill's intention to have clarity and transparency on the decisions to grant parole to those serving long sentences. A more transparent and structured parole system would assist in the rehabilitation of prisoners by giving an incentive for good conduct and engagement in programmes, training and services in prison, which should be welcomed.

The other aspect of the Bill - the ability of victims of crime to make submissions and be heard in the process - has long been called for and is also to be welcomed. As this legislation would apply to those serving longer sentences, the persons being considered for parole have committed quite serious crimes that have had a major impact on the lives of victims. It is, therefore, appropriate that the victims be heard and that the impact on their lives be considered in the conditions for release. We would also welcome the input of psychologists and other professionals with expertise in dealing with the rehabilitation of prisoners.

A number of ideas from groups such as the Irish Penal Reform Trust appear in the Bill but others do not. I ask Deputy Jim O'Callaghan why this is the case and that these other ideas be given consideration on Committee and subsequent Stages. For example, we think it is important that risk assessments carried out by the Garda as part of the process not be carried out by gardaí who had been directly involved in the case, as clearly there is a danger, or at the very least a perceived danger, of bias. There need to be strict protocols or controls to ensure re-sentencing would not occur in the parole process.

We also question the extent to which exceptional cases may be considered, for example, prisoners with a terminal illness or cases involving other exceptional humanitarian grounds. There is a danger that, in detailing in primary legislation the grounds for parole, the Deputy may not allow sufficient flexibility to deal with such cases when they come before the Parole Board.

In reintegrating prisoners back into society resources need to be made available to provide support for prisoners coming out of prison. We need proper investment in education and training programmes, as well as adequate counselling services and services provided by psychologists, both in prison and for newly released prisoners.

I want to make a wider point on crime. The Bill would obviously apply to those who have been sentenced for quite serious crimes which carry a term of imprisonment of eight years or more. However, the vast bulk of those in prison are there for lesser crimes. Crime is, undoubtedly, a real scourge for many communities - working class communities, in particular, but not exclusively. Many people are deeply impacted on by crime and can live in fear of crime which affects their quality of life on a daily basis. A core point that has to be made when discussing crime is that we need to move past the most immediate crime to say the breeding ground for crime is poverty, social exclusion and inequality. The evidence is irrefutable if one compares the levels of equality in different countries or areas. If we want to deal with crime in the long run, we have to build a society in which everybody will have decent opportunities in life and be able to avail of a decent standard of living. People should not be living in deprivation and there should not be the mass inequality we witness.

In dealing with crime when it happens custodial sentences are not the appropriate response to a wide variety of crimes and can actually be extremely counter-productive in that they can lead to people becoming repeat offenders. This does not deal with the problem. It may appeal to some Shylock notion of getting a pound of flesh or some commodity view of crime in the sense that someone has to receive their punishment. In looking at how we should deal with crime from the point of view of society as a whole and avoiding it within society, in many instances, it has been empirically proved that this simply does not work. We need investment to create a future for young people, particularly to create decent jobs, provide training and resource the education system to provide a stimulating and an engaging education for all.

Likewise, we need investment in youth services and to provide a future for everybody in our society. We will not oppose the Bill on this Stage, and we will consider amendments along the lines of what I have spoken about on Committee Stage and later.

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