On behalf of the probation and welfare service, I am grateful to have the opportunity to address the committee. In the interests of brevity, I will stick close to my notes, a copy of which has been distributed to members.
I will take some points from the service's mission statement. Its mission is to contribute to the safety of the public by challenging prisoners in custody and the community to address their offending behaviour. Our objective is to stop or reduce offending by criminals. In that context, it is important to note that every crime prevented or career in crime brought to an end represents a significant reduction in the number of victims.
We also contribute to public safety by promoting in the courts the use of what we term evidence based community sanctions - sanctions which have been proven in this and other jurisdictions to succeed - and the use of imprisonment as a last resort. We would ideally like to see a situation where no one is sent to prison for lesser crimes without first being given the chance to address his or her criminality in the context of a community sanction. We also are engaged in developing inter-agency facilities in the community to meet the needs of offenders and foster their social inclusion. Ideally, the ultimate goal is to integrate offenders into what we call mainstream community facilities.
There are some facts about the service on page 2 of my presentation. At any given time we are involved in supervising throughout the State approximately 5,500 offenders in the community on court orders. We prepare about 7,000 pre-sanction reports, assessments and proposals to the courts as to how the court might react to the finding of guilt for an offender. We provide a service for the approximately 3,200 prisoners in the 16 prisons of the State. I have also listed the staffing breakdown of the service - 179 probation and welfare officers are deployed in the courts in 31 centres in the State while 28 officers are based in the 16 prisons. In line with what was stated in the NESF report and the comments made at the committee's last meeting, the service staff comprise a highly skilled and committed workforce in the criminal justice system.
The service warmly welcomed publication of the report and is happy to be associated with its implementation. I wish to make a distinction between the concepts of reintegrating as against integrating offenders. It might be argued that many of those with whom we deal inside and outside prison have never really been integrated into society. Therefore, we are dealing with integrating rather than reintegrating them; for one reason or another they have been largely excluded from many of the State's services. The service also works toward the integration of prisoners into the community by being part of the multidisciplinary approach to those in prison. It is also part of the co-ordination group on the integration of offenders put in place since the report was published. It is uniquely positioned in that we work inside the prisons and the community.
The report focuses on what is part of a much bigger picture. The committee will be aware that public health nurses can identify newly born children in families who will grow up in difficult circumstances and can say certain children will have problems at schoolgoing age. If they become delinquent and come into conflict with the law, they come into contact with Garda diversion schemes in what could be called the pre-crime cycle. They come into contact with our service when the courts look to us for assessment or the use of community sanctions. They come into contact with the service in children detention schools when still of schoolgoing age and the Prisons Service. They also come into contact with the rehabilitation network which our service has in place throughout the country.
Part of our work involves supervising prisoners on temporary release. We supervise approximately 70 persons serving life sentences who have been released into the community. We also offer voluntary support to those who seek our services on leaving prison.
There is a fairly widespread perception that probation supervision is a soft option. I would like to try to dispel that notion. The service is involved in the supervision of serious offenders - people convicted sometimes of serious crimes where the cases have been heard before the higher courts. These people often have substantial crime records and have served previous prison sentences. Approximately two thirds of the people with whom we work fit into the lower medium risk offenders category whose crimes involve drugs, property crime, assaults and public order offences, whereas one third might be considered to be in the high risk category. The latter would be involved in serious property crime, serious assaults against the person, sex offenders, female offenders and many addiction-related offending. If people do not comply with a court or temporary release order, we hold the offender accountable to the Prisons Service by implementing breach procedures which are in place in both instances. It is important for our credibility to be seen to do that.
On the previous occasion, Vincent Salmon from the prison education service referred to the fact that many people who do good work within prison discontinue that work when they leave prison. This is partly as a result of what I refer to as "post-release euphoria". While these people are well behaved in the prison controlled environment, and participate in therapy, education, etc., when they leave prison the freedom goes to their heads. They are sometimes treated like heroes in their communities. They celebrate and begin again to abuse alcohol, drugs and so on. This contributes to the lack of follow-up work with people leaving prison. Even though the personal and social problems of these people have been addressed to some extent in prison, many of them leave prison with problems such as homelessness, addiction, family relationship difficulties, etc. They still require the intervention of skilled people.
I remind members that probation officers are all trained social workers who have experience of working within the criminal justice system and are, therefore, placed to address these issues with offenders. Unless people leave prison with a proper plan that has been drawn up and agreed with them in advance, it is very difficult to engage them once they are on the outside. For that reason, we advocate the more extensive use of supervised temporary release orders. This enables people to be held accountable to the Prisons Service during the time they are under supervision.
I have listed some of the activity in which the probation and welfare service has been involved in meeting the requirements of the NASF report. As stated earlier, our work in the community and in prisons is multidisciplinary in nature. We have developed relationships with the partnerships. We have representation on some of them and we have participated in initiatives with them in particular parts of the country such as Wexford and north-east Dublin. We initiated and developed the host strategy team. Perhaps Vivian Geiran will speak more about that later.
Members heard about linkage on the previous occasion, another programme which has been funded and developed as an integration measure. We put in place drugs link workers, people employed with money provided through the service by the local drugs task forces. They link up with people from their areas in prison and try to ensure that when people with drug problems leave prison they are linked into the community-based services. We have also begun developing what we call our youth justice initiative. We will work with young people under the Children Act, including those in the open and secure detention schools and in community facilities such as hostels, workshops and special projects that are either in place, or will be put in place for dealing with young offenders.
The victim mediation service is an important part of helping people come to terms with the issue of integration. I have included the budget of the probation and welfare service. The part that might be of most interest is the unit costs at the bottom of the page. This gives an approximate cost for each of the different orders operated by the service.
