Niall Collins (Limerick, Fianna Fail)
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264. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the policies she will put in place to tackle the recidivism rates amongst those who have previously been in custody. [41134/14]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I published the Report of the Penal Policy Review Group on 17 September. The Report proposes the adoption of a penal policy with the dual purposes of punishment and rehabilitation both in the imposition and management of criminal sanctions.

The Review Group identified rehabilitation and reintegration as a core principle and significant factor in reducing crime and considers that such aims are best achieved in a non-custodial environment as far as possible. In my view, prison is not the only solution when it comes to those convicted of lesser non violent offences. Re-offending can also be tackled head on by imposing a supervised community sanction, with appropriate supports, which could see punishment being served, but which would also lead, not only to rehabilitation, but to a reduced risk of re-offending.

In that context, I intend to proceed with the Criminal Justice (Community Sanctions) Bill which will strengthen the legislative framework for supervised community sanctions. In addition, the roll out of the Community Return Programme is continuing. This is a scheme where carefully selected prisoners can be granted reviewable temporary release coupled with a requirement to do community service work. The scheme represents a move away from releasing prisoners in an unstructured way.

Recidivism studies by the Central Statistics Office (CSO), which are available on my Department's website www.justice.ie, have shown that offenders who received either a Probation Order or a Community Service Order in 2007 and 2008 had a re-offending rate nearly 50% lower than those who had received a custodial sentence (41% vs 62%). This shows that supervised community sanctions can help to reduce re-offending, thereby reducing crime.

As I have stated previously, the publication of these studies will allow the Irish Prison Service and the Probation Service access to a comprehensive bank of data in relation to the rate of recidivism among ex-prisoners and offenders. Along with the implementation of the recommendations of the Penal Policy Review Group, this will help to inform future policy on the management of offenders and will facilitate the formulation of new strategies aimed at reducing recidivism.