MINISTER FOR Justice Alan Shatter has unveiled plans for the early release of 1,200 prisoners over the next three years to ease prison overcrowding and begin the reform of the prison system.
Under the plan, prisoners serving between one year and eight years will be eligible for a community release scheme half way through their sentence.
Only those deemed not to pose a safety risk to the community will be released. All prisoners will be screened before being approved for the programme.
“It’s to the benefit of everyone,” Mr Shatter said.
“It provides for work to the benefit of the community; that prisoners do. It reduces the expense for taxpayers of keeping people in prison. It also relieves overcrowding within our prisons. So provided we carefully select individuals, in all respects it’s a win-win and creates the possibility that some of those offenders . . . will not subsequently reoffend.” He said recidivism was “endemic” and had not been tackled by previous governments.
He was also in the process of reviewing the current system where prisoners are automatically entitled to 25 per cent remission, or time-off for good behaviour. He believed such an entitlement should be linked to prisoners’ behaviour records in jail.
The prison service has also earmarked the next 40 months as a period in which in-cell sanitation will be rolled out in all prisons, thus ending the practice of slopping out.
Drug-free units are also to be introduced in jails, as is an “incentivised regime”. The latter will involve offering prisoners rewards if they are compliant and fully engage with education, training and rehabilitation programmes while in jail. Those who perform well will receive a larger daily gratuity for the prison tuck shop, will have more contact with the outside world and will also be first in line for new accommodation when it comes on stream in jails.
All these policies are contained in the Irish Prison Service three-year strategic plan launched by Mr Shatter at the prison service training centre in Portlaoise yesterday.
The three-year plan was drawn up by the new director general of the prison service Michael Donnellan. A former head of the Probation Service, he said at yesterday’s launch that a new website was also being launched for the prison service as what he suggested was the beginning of a new approach to transparency.
“We’re going to publish the maximum amount of information that we can,” he said.
There are 4,400 prisoners being held in jails in the Republic with 900 on unstructured temporary release because there is nowhere to keep them in prisons.
A pilot programme has already been run for the new structured release plans, with 84 prisoners taking part in that scheme. Of them, four have been returned to prison for breaking the conditions of their release.
As part of that new community release plan, prisoners will be released from jail under the supervision of the Probation Service and Irish Prison Service and must engage in community service and structured rehabilitative programmes. If they adhere to the terms of their release and do not reoffend, they will be officially freed after a period equivalent to half the period of the sentence they still had to serve.
STRATEGIC PLAN: MAIN POINTS
* Early release for non-violent prisoners half-way through sentences of up to eight years. They must agree to close supervision and undergo work and rehabilitative courses in the community.
* In-cell sanitation to be provided in all prisons over the next 40 months.
* Drug-free units in all jails
* Overcrowding will be tackled this year and in the first quarter of 2013 at Mountjoy, Cork, Limerick and the Dóchas Centre
* By the end of 2013, 16- and 17-year-old prisoners to be taken out of St Patrick’s Institution
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