asked the Minister for Justice if he has any proposals to bring into line the percentage of sentence remission allowed in the case of male prisoners, which is less than that applying to female prisoners at present; and, if not, if he will give reasons for continuing the present practice.
Written Answers. - Prisoners' Sentence Remission.
269.
The only distinction that exists is in relation to penal servitude, as distinct from imprisonment.
The prison rules make no distinction between men and women in regard to the earning of remission of imprisonment. Neither is any distinction made in practice in the granting of remission of imprisonment over and above the remission "earned" under the rules.
The prison rules did distinguish between men and women sentenced to penal servitude. A woman serving penal servitude could earn one-third remission as compared with one-quarter for a man. However, because of a decision of the Supreme Court in 1955, it is clear that those particular provisions of the rules are of no force or effect. Remission may, however, be allowed under the Criminal Justice Act, 1951 even though not "earned" under prison rules and, in the small number of cases where a woman is serving a sentence of penal servitude, it has been usual to remit one-third as a matter of course.
Various aspects of the question of remission, including in particular the "earning" of remission under the prison rules, are being examined and it seems reasonable to assume that revised rules would not seek to reintroduce a distinction in this respect between men and women who are sentenced to penal servitude. This, however, is not intended to imply that either penal servitude prisoners or the much bigger numbers of other prisoners are likely to be accorded a more-or-less automatic claim to a remission of one-third on the basis that this has heretofore been accorded to those women prisoners who are serving penal servitude. Those who have had that concession were only a small minority of a small minority of the prison population.