asked the Minister for Justice (a) the services presently in existence to assist the rehabilitation of people released from prison, (b) the amount spent on such services and (c) the number of social workers or welfare officers allocated exclusively to such rehabilitation programmes.
Written Answers. - Rehabilitation of Prisoners.
225.
Offenders on release from prison may avail of the help and facilities provided by the probation and welfare service of my Department. The service provides counselling and advice for such offenders and their families.
Offenders who have completed their sentence are not obliged to accept supervision but it is offered to all offenders before they are discharged. Very few do, in fact, accept supervision.
Offenders who are granted full temporary release under section 2 of the Criminal Justice Act 1960 are usually released on condition that they accept supervision by the service during the period of the release.
Recently a scheme was introduced whereby certain offenders are released to serve the balance of their sentence in the community under intensive supervision of the service. In such cases a probation and welfare officer would have only four or five offenders to look after: at present 14 officers are engaged exclusively on this work.
My Department provide a day-centre (with workshop facilities) in Dublin for those released on intensive supervision. In addition my Department support financially voluntary committees who provide living accommodation, work-training, or day-centre facilities for discharged or released offenders.
Apart from staff engaged on intensive supervision, no other staff are engaged exclusively on after-care of offenders. Usually after-care is carried out by staff as part of their overall case-load. Consequently it is not possible to give a meaningful costing of the after-care element of their work.