For the purpose of this question, young offenders are taken to be those under the age of 18 years. There were 94 young offenders in custody in Irish prisons on 29 January 2002. This compares to a total of 107 offenders in the same category on 26 May 2000. These figures illustrate that there has been a drop in the number of such committals of persons in this age category in the intervening time period.
The majority of young offenders are held in closed institutions, that is, St. Patrick's Institution, Dublin, Fort Mitchel Place of Detention, Spike Island, and Wheatfield Prison, Dublin. The regimes are liberal and as relaxed as possible within the confines of a closed institution. Staff-offender ratios are high, reflecting the relatively long out-of-cell periods in comparison with international norms. Legal provisions for the committal of young offenders under the age of 18 years will, however, change on the commencement of the relevant provisions of the Children Act 2001. This Act proposes that where a court imposes a period of detention on a child, it shall, where the child is under 16 years of age, order the child to be detained in a children's detention school – operated by the Department of Education and Science – and where the child is 16 or 17 years of age, it shall order the child to be detained in a place of detention – provided by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. Under the provisions of the Act, separate, dedicated secure detention centres will be required for the accommodation of 16 and 17 year old offenders. The primary objective of these detention centres will be to provide a secure but supportive environment in which young offenders can develop the social skills necessary to avoid future offending. These new high quality, purpose built facilities will be the setting in which a progressive regime will be delivered tailored to the special needs of this group. It is intended to propose two facilities, one in Cork and one in the general Dublin area, to meet the requirements of the Act in this respect.
Records are not maintained in a way which would allow for the provision of exact statistics on rates of recidivism. Recidivism is, however, a recognised phenomenon in all criminal justice systems. Measures in place to address recidivism include the availability of non-custodial options such as the juvenile liaison officer – JLO – scheme which is a Garda youth diversion scheme for young people at risk of offending. While the numbers cautioned through the JLO scheme has fallen by 26% over the last five years – see table below – it should be noted that, since its inception in 1963, 87.5% of those referred have not reoffended within their two year supervisory period.