Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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366. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the extent to which rehabilitative and educational courses are made available to prisoners throughout the country with particular reference to first-time offenders with a view to encouraging them away from crime; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [42821/20]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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Prisoner care and rehabilitation is a core aim of the Irish Prison Service.  The Service tries to achieve a balanced approach in the effective performance of its care and custody functions. It seeks to manage sentences in a way which encourages and supports prisoners in their efforts to live law abiding and purposeful lives on release.

I understand that a wide range of rehabilitative programmes are provided to those in custody  including education, vocational training, healthcare, psychiatric, psychological, addiction counselling, welfare and spiritual services.  These programmes, which are available in all prisons and to all prisoners, including first time offenders, can offer purposeful activity to those in custody while serving their sentences.  

I am advised that the Prison Psychology Service proactively target specific cohorts of prisoners including for example, violent offenders with over two year sentence, as well as 18-24 year olds in custody.

Assistant Psychologists have been recruited since 2016. Their focus is primarily on mental health and sentence management work with prisoners. They are tasked with engaging and motivating this cohort of prisoners, who are committed to custody on a sentence of one year or more and who do not have a post-release supervision order to develop a sentence plan and to engage in appropriate interventions. 

I am pleased to report that the Probation Service have joined this initiative by engaging in assessments with those 18-24 year olds who have post release supervision orders. 

The strategic objective to have a multi-agency approach to offender management and rehabilitation from pre to post imprisonment in order to reduce re-offending and improve prisoner outcomes, forms a central part of the Prison and Probation Service Joint Strategic Plan 2018 - 2020. 

There is a clear commitment to enhance sentence planning through Integrated Sentence Management and the delivery of prison based rehabilitative programmes.  The Joint IPS/ETBI Education Strategy 2019 - 2021 sets out a commitment to the provision of broad based education provision and includes supporting integration and sentence planning. 

Education in prisons is delivered in partnership between the Education Training Boards and the Prison Service with a focus on providing education which is quality assured, student centred and which facilitates lifelong learning. A broad and flexible curriculum is provided.   

Other areas where there has been significant progress in prison education are in physical education, in the provision for higher education, in the arts and in preparing people for release.  A top priority for the Service is ensuring help for those with literacy problems, and to this end, peer mentoring programmes are currently active in all prisons. 

The guiding principles which underpin the prisons' work and training service are to make available, work, work-training and other purposeful activities to all those in custody.  Training activities are chosen to give as much variety as possible and also to give opportunities for those in prison to acquire practical skills which will help them secure employment on release. Occupational activities such as craft based skills and picture framing are also available.  Work Training Officers have been appointed and assigned to areas such as catering, laundry, industrial cleaning, industrial skills and gym. 

I am pleased to state that the Prison Service has also been expanding the number of accredited courses and opportunities available to prisoners in Work Training in recent years. Enhanced partnership arrangements with accrediting bodies such as City and Guilds, the Guild of Cleaners and Launderers and Cleanpass and the centralising of coordination and quality assurance arrangements have enabled the prison service to extend the number of available courses and activities with certification to people in custody. 

Finally, the Deputy may wish to note that I recently launched in the "Working to Change Social Enterprise Strategy - 2021-2023". The strategy sets out my Department’s direction for supporting employment options for people with convictions by simultaneously working to remove the systemic barriers so that people can make sustainable changes. It builds upon a solid foundation of employment supports already in place across the criminal justice sector and is a collaboration between the Prison and the Probation Service and my Department of Justice.

Currently, there are various employment focussed interventions which take place along the criminal justice spectrum for those in custody, those preparing for release and for those engaging in Probation funded projects in the community. In addition, people with convictions can avail of the programmes provided through Government Agencies which support training, employment and entrepreneurship. The strategy aims to create a flexible, responsive system that ties all of these interventions together in a coherent, strategic and progressive manner with each intervention building on the previous ones, for the benefit of people with convictions and communities they return to.

A copy of the Strategy can be found on my Departmental website.