merrion street

Distinguished Guests, Judge Reilly, Inspector of Prisons.

I am delighted to be with you here today in the Irish Prison Service

Training & Development Centre to launch the new Three-Year Strategic Plan

for the Irish Prison Service.

The Strategy contains a new mission statement and vision for the Irish

Prison Service – a mission to “provide safe and secure custody, dignity of

care and rehabilitation to prisoners for safer communities” and a vision

for the Service of “a safer community through excellence in a prison

service built on respect for human dignity”.

The key objectives are -

· Increasing public safety by maintaining safe and secure custody for

all those committed by the courts and by reducing reoffending and

improving prisoner rehabilitation through the development of a

multiagency approach to offending;

· Ensuring Ireland’s compliance with domestic and international human

rights obligations and best practice; and

· Delivering reform and implementing change in accordance with the

Public Service Agreement and the Integrated Reform Plan for the

Justice and Equality Sector.

The Irish Prison Service plays a very important role in providing safe care

and secure custody of all of those committed to it by the courts. The role

of the Service is also to engage with convicted prisoners in a realistic

and meaningful way in order to reduce their reoffending and enhance their

reintegration back into society. By doing so, the Service can not only

contribute to public safety and a reduction in recidivism but also ensure

that convicted offenders properly serve sentences imposed on them and that

decisions made relating to prisoners in its care do not result in any

unnecessary danger/risk to the wider community. This cannot be done by the

Prison Service on its own. It requires the Service to work in close

partnership with key Departments, agencies and organisations in the

community and non-statutory sector.

I am glad to see that the Strategic Plan includes concrete and practical,

if ambitious, targets.

These include endeavouring to align the capacity of our prisons with the

guidelines laid down by the Inspector of Prisons in so far as this is

compatible with public safety and the integrity of the criminal justice

system. The Inspector of Prisons, Judge Michael Reilly, has done

considerable work in setting a benchmark against which the Irish Prison

Service is to be measured and I am heartened to see that many of his

recommendations have been translated into concrete steps to be taken by the

Service over the coming three years.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Judge Reilly for his

guidance and constructive advice to the Irish Prison Service and local

management of prisons on a variety of matters. You will be aware of my

recent decision that all deaths in custody or of those recently released

from prison are now to be investigated by the Inspector. I welcome the

impartiality and indeed rigour that this recent development will bring.

Returning to the Strategy, I am particularly pleased to note the actions

centred specifically around juvenile offenders. The detention of children

in St. Patrick’s Institution will end with the provision of more

appropriate accommodation and regimes in the new detention facility at

Oberstown by mid-2014. This is thanks to investment by the Irish Youth

Justice Service under the auspices of my colleague Frances FitzGerald, TD,

Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, and signals the Government’s

commitment to address children's issues. Only last week we jointly

launched new legislation making it an offence not to report serious crimes

against children and Heads of a Bill to implement the Children First

Guidelines on a statutory basis. I should add these are primarily child

protection measures and are not intended to generate more business for the

Irish Prison Service.

We are committed to eliminating the practice of slopping out in our prison

system and upgrading outdated, and in some cases, Victorian accommodation

as set out in the Government Programme for National Recovery. The Strategy

I am launching here today outlines a 40-month capital plan to provide

in-cell sanitation in all cells and significantly improve prison conditions

in the older parts of the prison estate. In fact, the largest single

allocation of the capital allocation to the Justice Sector for 2012 was

provided to the Prisons Service to fund the Prison Service Building

Programme. This allows for the completion of a new 300-space prison wing in

the Midlands Prison which is expected to become operational later this

year. The Capital Plan also provides for continuation of the refurbishment

and in-cell sanitation project in Mountjoy Prison which will be a major

improvement on the existing physical conditions, including the provision of

in-cell sanitation.

By the end of this year, almost 60 percent of cells in the prison will have

in-cell sanitation and by 2014 the whole prison will have been radically

upgraded providing a much improved physical environment for both staff and

prisoners. Detailed plans are also being finalised for the replacement of

Cork prison through the construction of a new modern prison on the adjacent

prison car park site and I also understand that planning has commenced in

relation to the replacement of parts of Limerick prison which are no longer

fit for purpose in the twenty first century.

Our prisons are not intended to be mere warehouses for criminals and I want

to see an increased emphasis on rehabilitation. To this end, the Prison

Service is setting out to re-engineer our prison system to give further

effect to the principles of normalisation, progression and reintegration.

This is done through work training and education, but also through the work

of the medical, dental and other healthcare services, the psychology

service and the chaplaincy not forgetting the inputs from the Probation

Service and voluntary and community organisations. Of particular importance

to this process is the introduction of the new Incentivised Regimes Policy,

and the continuing roll-out of the Integrated Sentence Management

programme.

Incentivised Regime provides for a differentiation of privileges between

prisoners according to their level of engagement with services and quality

of behaviour. It is mandatory for each prison and for all prisoners. The

objective is to provide tangible incentives to prisoners to participate in

structured activities and to reinforce incentives for good behaviour,

leading to a safer and more secure environment. There are three levels of

privilege provided for – basic, standard and enhanced. In practice, newly

committed prisoners will enter at the standard level. They will progress

to the enhanced level by meeting the criteria for that level, notably by

exemplary behaviour and satisfactory engagement in structured activities,

and, for those offenders eligible, participation in Integrated Sentence

Management. Regression to the basic level will result from failure to meet

the criteria for the standard level, notably by failure to meet normal

behaviour standards and/or consistent refusal to engage in structured

activities.

The intended incentives at the enhanced level potentially include:

· a level of gratuity higher than standard,

· higher levels of access to private cash and tuck shop expenditure,

· priority access to better quality accommodation,

· an enhanced daily regime,

· enhanced facilities and

· increased contact with the outside world.

At the enhanced level, prisoners must participate actively in structured

activities in education, work/training and/or offender programmes for a

specified time The level of participation and commitment will be confirmed

by the person in charge of the activity, for example the head teacher,

industrial manager or senior psychologist.

This policy has the potential to deliver a safer and more secure

environment for prisoners and staff and to enhance prisoner rehabilitation

through greater involvement in sentence planning and structured activities.

The policy will also develop the role of prison officers - class officers

and ACOs in particular - and can be a catalyst for bringing about cultural

change in the prisons.

Integrated Sentence Management goes hand in hand with the Incentivised

Regime and involves a new orientation in the delivery of services to

prisoners and a new emphasis on prisoners taking greater personal

responsibility for their own development through active engagement with

both specialist and non-specialist services in the prisons. The end result

will be a prisoner-centred, multidisciplinary approach to working with

prisoners with provision for initial assessment, goal setting and periodic

review to measure progress.

Newly committed prisoners with a sentence of greater than one year are

eligible to take part in Integrated Sentence Management. If they agree to

participate, an assessment is undertaken to identify the needs of the

prisoner in several areas such as accommodation, education and offending

behaviour. Referrals are made on foot of this assessment to services

within the prison such as Education or Work & Training and outside agencies

providing an in-reach service. These services and agencies carry out their

own assessment of the prisoner and feed their recommended actions back to

the Integrated Sentence Management Co-ordinator. From this a Personal

Integration Plan of actions for the prisoner to complete during his/her

time in prison is compiled.

Approximately 9 months prior to the release of the prisoner, a Community

Integration Plan is developed. This sets out a plan for the prisoner to

prepare for his/her release. Important issues such as accommodation,

employment or education are addressed to help the prisoner resettle into

the community on release and reduce the risk of re-offending.

These policies are, I believe, central to the rehabilitation of those

committed to the care of the Irish Prison Service and thereby contribute

towards a safer society.

Before I conclude I should also mention the Interdepartmental group on

mental health and the criminal justice system we have established. I look

forward to its recommendations which may have important implications for

diverting the mentally ill from prison and ensuring those in prison receive

appropriate treatment.

I also want to say that it is my intention to consolidate and restate

prison legislation in clear accessible modern terms and in this context,

one of the issues I am currently considering is the area of remission as it

is my view that a review of this particular subject is long overdue.

The Strategy is underpinned by the principles of dignity and respect and

these principles will be at the heart of what the Service sets out to

achieve over the period of the Strategy. I am aware that the Service has a

long and proud tradition of providing safe, secure and humane custody to

prisoners in its care and I believe that, in this context, this Strategy

sets a challenging reform agenda for the next three years.

In all things balance is critically important and I emphasise the fact that

in all of this the most vital strategic target is the enhancement of public

safety. As a key element of the Criminal Justice System, the Irish Prison

Service, along with An Garda Síochána and the Courts, has a critical role

to play in this regard and it is vitally important that, when what some

commentators have described as the inevitable tension between care and

custody becomes an issue, we must never lose sight of the need to put

public safety and the integrity of the Criminal Justice System to the

forefront.

The realisation of the vision that it embodies for the Service is very much

dependent on buy-in from every member of staff in the Service, - everyone –

in every prison, in headquarters, leaders and those at the interface with

prisoners and the support services. Reform cannot be solely driven from

the top; it must be driven and embraced by each and every member of staff

who must act as the key agents of change. I am glad to see that all the

senior managers of the Irish Prison Service are here today, Governors,

Directors and other senior staff. Your staff look to you for leadership.

Show that leadership! If you embrace the objectives outlined in this

strategic plan; lead and drive them then together you can make the changes

that are required to transform the prison system in a progressive and

positive way.