andMr. Bruton asked the Minister for Justice the total value of sales of goods or services of prisoners; the total amount of payments to prisoners in respect of the work in question; and the manner in which any surplus of the former over the latter is used.
Written Answers. - Prisoners' Goods and Services Sales.
194.
Total receipts for goods and services provided by the prisoners in 1978 amounted to £144,000. Expenditure on materials used in the prison workshops and training sections amounted to £184,000. The receipts were for goods and services provided by both prison officer instructors and prisoners as a product of employment or of training. The receipts are not related to moneys paid to prisoners. Payments to prisoners are made in the form of gratuities and are paid to sentenced prisoners who are of good behaviour and carry out the work assigned to them. The gratuity at present is £2.10 per week and the total so paid in 1978 was £94,000.
Prison industries are not intended necessarily to be profit-making operations. That apart, they serve two main purposes:
1. To keep prisoners usefully employed and teach them the work habit. This promotes the good and orderly management of the prison.
2. To provide prisoners, as far as possible, with useful skills to help them re-integrate into the community on their release. Some of them are given AnCO type industrial training in the Glengarriff Training Unit.
As the appropriation accounts for 1978 have not yet been finalised, the figures quoted above for receipts and expenditure are necessarily provisional.