Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 167: To ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the action he proposes to take to combat recidivism; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7877/09]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy will be aware of the findings of the major study on prisoner re-offending, undertaken by the Institute of Criminology at UCD, which was facilitated by the Irish Prison Service. Briefly the study found that 27.4% of released prisoners were serving a new prison sentence within one year; this rose to 39.2% after two years, 45.1% after three years and 49.2% after four years.

The Irish Prison Service provides a range of rehabilitative programmes which have the dual purpose of providing prisoners with purposeful activity while serving their sentences and encouraging and equipping them to lead productive lives on release. Prisoner rehabilitation involves significant multidimensional input by a diverse range of general and specialist services provided both by the Irish Prison Service and in-reach statutory and non-statutory services. Briefly these include: healthcare, psychiatric, psychological, educational, work and training, vocational, counselling, welfare and spiritual services. These services are important in addressing offending behaviour, drug and alcohol addiction, missed educational and vocational opportunities, anger management, and self management in the interest of encouraging positive personal development in prisoners, and preparing them for re-integration and resettlement on release from custody.

The Irish Prison Service places a strong emphasis on access to educational services and on the provision of work and training activities for prisoners. Educational services are available at all institutions and are provided in partnership with a range of educational agencies in the community including the VECs, Public Library Services, Colleges and the Arts Council. Literacy, numeracy and general basic education provision is the priority of the Prison Education Service and broad programmes of education are made available which generally follow an adult education approach. A significant expansion and development of vocational training programmes has taken place in recent years and there are now over 90 workshops in place in our prisons capable of catering for in excess of 800 prisoners each day.

The Irish Prison Service is also delivering programmes aimed at reducing the demand for drugs within the prison system through enhanced security measures as well as education, treatment and rehabilitation services for drug-addicted prisoners. Significant progress is also being made in the development of programmes based on risk assessment and rehabilitation needs. The Irish Prison Service is developing and rolling-out a fully coordinated system of Integrated Sentence Management. This system is being piloted in two prisons at the present time. The phased roll-out of Integrated Sentence Management will be dependant on the lessons learned from the evaluation of the pilot phase.

In addition, the Probation Service has an active role during the course of the prisoner's sentence in helping maintain links with family and community agencies, encouraging prisoners to address their offending behaviour and engaging prisoners in individual counselling and group counselling programmes such as offending behaviour, addiction, violence and sex offending.

I also wish to advise the Deputy about a number of other relevant initiatives. For example: The Adult Cautioning Scheme: which was agreed with the DPP, was introduced in 2006 as an alternative to bringing before the District Court persons against whom there is evidence of the commission of offences of a less serious nature, and where that is not required by the public interest and a caution would be an effective response to the offender. Provisions of the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act 1994 (Sections 4 and 5): these are now fixed charge offences following the enactment of the Criminal Justice Act 2006 and the Intoxicating Liquor Act 2008. Joint Policing Committees ( as provided for in the Garda Síochána Act 2005): Their purpose is to provide a forum where An Garda Síochána and the local authority — the two organisations which make the most significant contribution to preventing and tackling crime in a specific area — can come together, with the participation of members of the Oireachtas and community and voluntary interests, on matters affecting the area.

On 24 September, 2008 I launched, with my colleague the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, the roll out of the Committees from the initial pilot phase in 29 local authority areas to all 114 local authority areas. An Garda Síochána and the relevant local authorities have now commenced establishing the Committees in accordance with new Guidelines in local authority areas where there are not yet Committees.