The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, John OÆDonoghue, T.D., today opened the first ever formal Management Conference for senior officials in the Irish Prisons Service at the Red Cow Inn, Clondalkin.
The Minister outlined in his address progress made to date in achieving formal agency status for Irish prisons. Legislation in this regard will be introduced next year. The Agency already has an independent Board in place, chaired by financial services entrepreneur, Brian McCarthy of FEXCO. Since July 1999 day-to-day leadership of the agency has been vested in itÆs first ever Director General, Sean Aylward.
Minister OÆDonoghue in his remarks to the delegates reminded them of recent improvements in working and living conditions in Irish prisons with over 1,200 new prison spaces put in place in the last 3 years. These developments mean that we are approaching the end of the so-called "revolving door" syndrome. The Minister said this system had fundamentally undermined the publicÆs faith in the criminal justice system and had fed in to the high levels of crime and victimisation experienced in the country over much of the period from the mid 1980?s. With the completion of the GovernmentÆs prison building over the next 2 years the Minister said an unparalleled opportunity was now available to deliver rehabilitation programmes in Irish prisons.
The Minister also released publication that morning of comprehensive prison statistics in a single report format for the period 1995-1998. He noted also the overview given in the publication of key prisoner statistics for the current year. These figures were released in a single volume by the Prisons Service to coincide with the Conference. (Next year will see simultaneous publication of the 1999 and 2000 reports and from 2001 onwards each years annual report for prisons will appear in the first half of the following year.) Delays in production of such reports are coming to an end with the introduction of information technology on an extensive scale in the prisons.
The Minister reminded the prison officials present that despite the extensive building programme of recent years, Ireland still had one of the lowest overall rates of prisoner incarceration in the European Community and indeed the Western World. The latest international table of statistics in this regard, recently released by the UK Home Office showed Ireland to be one of the lowest among EU members, with 80 persons per 100,000 population in custody. Irish offender treatment approaches, the Minister said, continued to rely to a considerable extent on non-custodial sanctions. The effectiveness of such sanctions depended crucially on the certainty that the custodial option was in place for any offender who failed to take other lawful options open to him.
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