For some years now this newspaper has been reporting on the dismal record of children and young offenders in our courts. Time and again young offenders have been apprehended, brought before the courts, convicted and sentenced, only to be released on to the streets because there is no room.
Often this is because the secure places are taken up by disturbed children who have not, as yet, committed any crime.
Last year, following the deaths of two gardaí in an accident involving two young offenders, the Government decided to set up a detention centre in St Patrick's Institution for 20 youths aged between 14 and 16, at a cost of €9 milllion. The unplanned nature of this move, and the appropriateness of this institution for that age group, have been questioned by those working with young offenders, and it may well end up in the European Court of Human Rights.
Our juvenile justice system is clearly a shambles, with inadequate diversion and crime-prevention programmes in communities from which most young offenders come, far too few places both for disturbed children who have not entered the criminal justice system and for those children, disturbed or not, who have, and with little follow-up support on their release for those detained. The 2001 Children Act was a brave attempt to tackle some of these issues, but so far many of its provisions remain unimplemented.
And now the Minister for Justice is proposing to close Shanganagh Castle, an open detention centre for young offenders which has provided rehabilitation and education for 16 to 21 year-olds. As such it is an essential part of any juvenile justice system. The reason given for the sale is that it will raise money for other programmes in the Department of Justice. The suspicion must be that the money raised will go to fund the necessary once-off pay-off to the prison officers to compensate them for giving up the enormous levels of overtime they have enjoyed for so many years.
If so, it would be a scandalous diversion of resources from a vulnerable sector of society towards a group of public servants who, while they have given valuable service in a difficult job, have been well rewarded and whose work practices have not been beyond criticism. But whatever the intended destination of the funds, Shanganagh Castle is an institution that deserves to be fully used, not closed. We will all pay a price in the future, financial as well as social, for the lack of investment in the education and rehabilitation of young offenders now.