Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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331. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality the capacity of the Prison Service; how this has changed over the past four years; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [44244/15]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I am advised by the Irish Prison Service that figures in relation to the prisoner population and capacity levels are published on their website on a daily basis. The Deputy should be aware that the overall bed capacity of the Irish Prison System is 4,116. On 4 December, 2015 there were 3,770 prisoners in custody. This represents a occupancy rate of 92 per cent.

On 4 December, 2011 the overall bed capacity of the Irish Prison Service was 4,480 and there were 4,252 prisoners in custody, representing a occupancy rate of 95 per cent.

Great strides have been made and continue to be made, to reduce the numbers in custody, to improve and modernise prison conditions, to increase the number of single cell accommodation and to eliminate slopping out.

I am advised by my officials that the modernisation project at Mountjoy prison is ongoing and nearing completion. Mountjoy Prison currently has a single cell policy and all prisoners have in cell sanitation facilities. In relation to Cork Prison, a new prison was constructed to replace the existing facility and this will become operational in early 2016. Planning is also advancing regarding the replacement of A & B Division in Limerick Prison.

It is intended as outlined in the Irish Prison Service Three Year Strategic Plan, to align the capacity of our prisons with the guidelines laid down by the Inspector of Prisons in 2014, in so far as this is compatible with public safety and the integrity of the criminal justice system.

As the Deputy will be aware, the Irish Prison Service employs a wide range of approaches in addressing prisoners offending behaviours. While it is important to note that the best indication of future offending are the age, gender, offence type and the criminal history of the individual, there are also dynamic factors that the prisons and other agencies can address. These include employment status, education level, family situation and drug and addiction issues. In addition there are more complex psychological factors that are associated with offending that can also be addressed by the prison system.

To address these issues the Irish Prison Service has rolled out Integrated Sentence Management (ISM) across all Prisons. This is a prisoner-centred, multidisciplinary approach to working with prisoners with provision for initial assessment, goal setting and periodic review to measure progress.

Prisoner rehabilitation involves significant multidimensional input by a diverse range of general and specialist services provided both by the Irish Prison Service and in-reaching statutory and non-statutory services.Amongst these are healthcare, psychiatric, psychological, educational, 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.

Since 2011, the Irish Prison Service has introduced a number of new schemes to specifically aid prisoner reintegration and reduce re-offending. The Community Return Scheme is an initiative whereby carefully selected prisoners, serving sentences between 1 year and 8 years, can be granted reviewable temporary release coupled with a requirement to do community service work such as painting, gardening or graffiti removal in a supervised group setting. The type of work involved is intended to assist the community and the scheme is involved with a large number of charitable organisations and local community groups.

A recent report on the Community Return Scheme has showed that there were 232 persons released in the first year of the Scheme, from October 2011 to end September 2012. Of this group the report highlighted that as at the end of year 2013, 91% of those involved in the Scheme had not returned to custody.

In addition to Community Return, a Community Support Scheme has also been introduced to reduce recidivism rates of short term prisoners by arranging for additional support structures post release and by providing for a more structured form of temporary release.

The Central Statistics Office has published two recidivism studies, for 2007 and 2008, the latter of which shows an overall reduction in recidivism of 4.3% from the previous year. The latest recidivism study, for 2009, will be published on 14 December 2015. The publication of these recidivism studies and of future studies allows the Irish Prison Service access to a comprehensive bank of data in relation to the rate of recidivism among ex-prisoners. This will help to inform future policy on the management of offenders and will facilitate the formulation of new strategies aimed at reducing recidivism

The Deputy will also be aware that I have recently launched the Joint Agency Response to Crime initiative (JARC), which aims to implement a multi-agency approach to the management of crime, to prioritise certain prolific offenders and to develop specific initiatives which will address their behaviour and reduce crime thereby increasing community safety.