Persons convicted by the courts of offences involving violence against women or children may, as in the case of other crimes, be made subject to supervision by the probation and welfare service or may be committed to a term of imprisonment.
The probation and welfare service does not operate programmes dedicated solely to dealing with violence against women and children but anger management or attitudes to violence is an integral core module in several projects organised by the service. The intention is to address the origins and violent manifestations of offending. Every offender participating in any of these programmes is exposed to this module and results show significant attitudinal change in the majority of offenders completing the course.
At Mountjoy Prison a programme called The Alternatives To Violence Programme has been running for the past four years. It is delivered by a small number of volunteer workers including members of the Society of Friends. Programmes are aimed at confronting individual prisoners' propensity to violence and helping them overcome their violent tendencies. There continues to be a high level of interest in these programmes which are run over a weekend. Each session is restricted to 20 and in all some 500 inmates have participated to date. Similar programmes have commenced recently in Limerick Prison and Wheatfield place of detention.
A new non-therapeutic programme for offenders, the thinking skills training programme, was introduced in Arbour Hill Prison earlier this year. It is hoped to introduce a similar programme in Cork Prison in the near future. The thinking skills programme is designed to target a range of offenders including those convicted of sex offences and other offences involving violence against women and children. The programme is run by multi-disciplinary teams, including prison officers, probation and welfare staff and teaching staff under the guidance of my