This is a simple Bill which proposes to introduce into the law, governing the treatment of offenders, a number of minor changes which experience has shown to be desirable.
The first of these is the grant of parole to convicted prisoners. The necessity for making such an amendment of the law was first borne in on me shortly after I took office when an application for parole was made by a prisoner whose mother was dying and had expressed a wish to see her son. The circumstances were so tragic that I decided to grant the application although I was advised that I had no statutory authority to do so and that if the prisoner chose not to return to prison after a temporary release there would be no way of compelling him to return. In fact, this prisoner did return when the period of parole expired. Later, I had similar cases brought to my notice and I decided that it would be a good thing and in the interest of the rehabilitation of prisoners to have a power of parole for special cases. I intend to use the power sparingly but, perhaps, in time it may be possible to extend it to selected prisoners serving long sentences where this would be likely to help to rehabilitate them in society. I may consider granting it also to selected prisoners at Christmas. I shall feel my way as I go along and the extent to which parole is granted will depend on how the early cases honour their parole.
Secondly, parole facilities are being provided for criminal lunatics who are not regarded as dangerous to themselves or to others. In this case no more is involved than extending to criminal lunatics what can already be done for other mental patients at the discretion of the Chief Medical Officer of the hospital concerned but, in the case of criminal lunatics, it has been considered advisable to require the consent of the Minister for Justice to the grant of parole. As in the case of some prisoners, parole will be granted to mentally afflicted persons for short periods to enable them to adjust themselves to conditions in the outside world before their final discharge. For some patients, perhaps, it might not be too much to say that temporary releases of this kind will go a very long way towards eventual restoration to full mental health.
It is necessary to ensure that those released on parole can be compelled to return and the relevant provisions are contained in sections 5, 6, and 7 of the Bill.
Section 8 of the Bill is designed to help to relieve the present position of having the criminal lunatics now in district mental hospitals concentrated in the hospitals near Limerick, Portlaoise and Mountjoy Prisons. Under the present law criminal lunatics must be sent to the district mental hospital in the area in which they are liable to be confined in prison: the provisions of Section 8 will enable a criminal lunatic to be sent to any district mental hospital. It is being provided, in addition that any criminal lunatic may be sent to the Central Mental Hospital, Dundrum, and be transferred from there to any district mental hospital. These provisions are in the interests of both the patients and the hospital authorities. The patients can be located in institutions nearer to their homes and relatives. Those of them whose treatment requires reasonable freedom of movement within an institution but who are prone to escape can be transferred to an institution such as the Central Mental Hospital where adequate precautions can be taken.
The remaining provisions of the Bill are concerned with the treatment of young offenders. The object of these provisions is to keep young offenders who may not yet be set in their ways from association with habitual criminals. Section 9, for example authorises the Courts to remand young offenders in custody to a remand institution, with their consent. For girls, the remand institution will normally be a convent. Not a great many are involved, just a couple at a time up to a maximum of about 30 a year. I am indebted to His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin, whose interest in youth problems needs no stressing on my part, for having kindly arranged to have St. Mary Magdalen's Asylum, Seán MacDermott Street, made available as a remand institution. I have no doubt that other convents will be willing to accept girls on this basis also. Only a very few girls of other religious denominations are remanded in custody but I shall be glad to co-operate with the Church authorities concerned with a view to providing similar facilities for these girls as far as may be practicable.
As regards a remand institution for youths, the question of adapting portion of St. Patrick's Institution for the purpose is under active consideration. St. Patrick's is, of course, the Institution for youths sentenced to Borstal detention and also for youths between sixteen and twenty-one years of age who have been sentenced to imprisonment but who have been transferred to the Institution under the provisions of section 3 of the Prevention of Crime Act, 1908. Since 1956, when the Institution was transferred from Clonmel to Dublin by my predecessor it has been the practice to transfer to St. Patrick's virtually all prisoners under 21 and now, out of a total population of about 91 youths only 36 are Borstal detainees undergoing the prescribed minimum sentence of two years. The remainder are serving short sentences, usually for not more than three months.
The Bill recognises this situation by authorising the Courts to sentence young offenders between 16 and 21 years direct to St. Patrick's instead of to prison. It also proposes to drop the use of the term "Borstal", although the power of the Courts to send offenders to detention in the Institution for a minimum period of two years, in the same circumstances as offenders can at present be sent to Borstal, is being preserved.
General criticism of our prison administration does not make sufficient allowance, on the one hand, for the practical difficulties that have to be faced and for the need for detention to act as a deterrent and, on the other, for the solid good work that is being done by the staff of St. Patrick's and the voluntary workers who have interested themselves in the work of rehabilitation. The youths in St. Patrick's are kept fully occupied from day to day; many of them receive instruction in useful crafts; they have facilities for healthy recreation, both indoor and outdoor; they have lectures of an educational or religious character; a most enthusiastic Visiting Committee and Welfare Association interest themselves in the youths practically individually; and, what is of importance, too, there is a full-time Catholic Chaplain and a Church of Ireland Chaplain to advise them and to minister to their spiritual needs.
Whatever defects the Institution may have, I have no doubt that the efforts of all concerned in its day-to-day administration go a long way towards overcoming them. I am satisfied that a proper balance is being maintained between the discipline which is essential in any institution—but particularly in an institution where most of the inmates are young men many of whom have been convicted several times of serious crimes, including crimes of violence—and the humaneness which must be extended to fellow-creatures whose offences, in many cases, are due, in part at least, to bad environment or bad upbringing or lack of education or mental retardation. Many glowing tributes to the work being carried on in St. Patrick's and to the manner in which the buildings have been adapted to institutional needs have been paid by visitors with experience of such institutions abroad.
Of course, in an ideal situation where cost need not be counted, young offenders, youths and girls, would be classified into three or four or more categories, for example, remands, short-term offenders, long-term offenders, maladjusted offenders, etc., and separate institutions including some of the "open" type, established for each separate category in various parts of the country. The cost of doing so would be entirely extravagant in relation to the number of offenders concerned in this country.
At present the prison service costs the taxpayer around £4,200 a week or £220,000 a year for keeping a daily average of 475 prisoners. This cost would be enormously increased if a number of new institutions, with separate staffs and amenities, were established. And, apart from cost, the number of persons likely to be sent by the Courts to the institutions might easily be so low as to make it impracticable to run them at all. For example, over the last ten years the daily average of Borstal detainees has not exceeded 24. In these circumstances it would be hard to contemplate establishing an institution exclusively for such offenders.
All this is not to say that I do not realise the importance of trying to ensure that a period spent in detention will help to turn the offender away from the path of crime. But it would be wrong to ignore the difficulties I have referred to or the amount of good work which is being done, quietly, in this respect by people who are determined to make the best use of the existing facilities. To a large extent St. Patrick's Institution is still in a development stage and it will not be possible to assess its worth until experience has been gained of the operation of the provisions of section 13 of the Bill, which allow the Courts to send offenders direct to it. It would be premature to consider major changes of an administrative character before such a review takes place.
In conclusion, I should like to express the hope that the modest reforms which the Bill proposes will meet with the approval of the House and that the Bill will come into force with the least possible delay.
