Vol. 504 No. 2
35 Mr. Higgins (Mayo) asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform the reason he has not approved a programme of therapy and rehabilitation to be paid for by the parents of a young sex offender (details supplied) in Castlerea prison who has not been offered a therapy programme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11440/99]
The person referred to by the Deputy was committed to Castlerea Prison on 9 October 1998. He is serving a four year sentence for rape and is not due for release with remission under 8 October 2001.
The request for private treatment was refused for the following reasons. First, the State has a legal responsibility for medical and therapeutic services provided to prisoners. As a matter of policy, this is interpreted as ensuring that prisoners are provided with standards and services equivalent to those available to citizens in the general community covered by the medical card scheme. Second, I could not accept any proposal which would circumvent this principle of State responsibility and accountability as it applied to prisoners.
If medical practitioners, social workers or counsellors not employed or retained by the Prison Service were to have access to prisoners on a frequent basis, the Prison Service would not have any real control over the treatment prescribed or given to offenders seen by those people. The net result would be to divest the prison medical service, and ultimately the Minister, of actual responsibility for the health and therapeutic care of prisoners in its broader sense while, legal responsibility in the strict sense would remain with them. This would be contrary to existing policy.
From a prison operational aspect, an absolute requirement is the consistency of treatment of prisoners. This applies equally to health and therapeutic care. If certain prisoners were allowed access to private therapy at their own expense all others would want the same concession or facility and, given that most would not have the means to pay for private treatment, this would pose a problem in the context of equality of treatment of prisoners generally.
The treatment prescribed might involve the release of the sex offender into the community. That too might put the State in a position where it could not meet its responsibilities to protect the community during the period of the sentence.
The person referred to by the Deputy will, along with all other convicted sex offenders, be invited to apply to participate in the sex offender treatment programme in Arbour Hill Prison. The next programme will begin in September and prior to this applications will be invited from all prisoners. The person referred to by the Deputy was seen by the probation and welfare officer on committal and on three other occasions since. He has not expressed an interest in this programme to date.
(Mayo): That is an appalling reply for a number of reasons.
I remind the Deputy that there is a time limit on all questions and I request that all Members ask just a supplementary question.
(Mayo): Does the Minister acknowledge that a service is not being provided in Castlerea at present? I do not concur that this person has not expressed an interest – he is very interested in undertaking the course.
The Minister is being short sighted in the extreme. The parents of this young man have had the initiative and interest in the welfare of their child to engage a private company – the Granada Institute, which is expert in this kind of therapeutic service – to provide at their own expense a rehabilitation programme for their son so that when he is released he can have a normal existence with the benefit of treatment which the State is effectively denying him.
Will the Minister rescind this decision given that his reply was prepared by his Department and he would not have seen it before he came in?
As I stated in reply to the question, the State has a legal responsibility in the treatment of offenders. It has a legal responsibility for their medical and therapeutic treatment. That is a principle which I cannot abrogate in response to the Deputy's question. Persons convicted of sex offences may be held in all closed institutions and at present the majority are held in Arbour Hill Prison, Wheatfield Place of Detention, Castlerea Prison, to which Deputy Higgins refers, and the Curragh Place of Detention. Individual counselling is available in all of the institutions. Counselling is also provided by my Department's clinical psychology service and the probation and welfare service. In addition there is a dedicated treatment programme in operation in Arbour Hill Prison.
Does the Minister agree he is telling us that no treatment is better than some treatment and that, because treatment cannot be provided by the State, it is better to leave a prisoner without that treatment? Is he telling us that it is more important to follow his bureaucratic guidelines than to provide treatment which would help the rehabilitation of the prisoner?
I do not accept the latter part of the Deputy's query. It must be remembered in the issue of treatment that two criteria must be met: the individual must be suitable for treatment and must volunteer for treatment. The information available to me is that compulsory treatment is not the way to proceed. It does not work.
