Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 10 Mar 1998

Vol. 488 No. 4

Written Answers - Crime Figures.

Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform (Mr. O'Donoghue)

Statistics are not maintained in a fashion which would allow the precise information requested by the Deputy to be made available. The extraction of the information would require the use of an inordinate amount of staff resources which could not be justified at this time.

The Deputy may, however, be interested in the information in the following table which details the numbers of persons, under the age of 17 years, committed to prison on conviction in each of the years 1990-4;

Number of persons (Male and Female) under the age of 17 years committed on conviction by year

1990	1991	1992	1993	1994
187	102	147	163	168

Male offenders aged 16 to 17 (and up to the age of 21) may be committed on remand or to serve a period of detention at St. Patrick's Institution. Male offenders aged 17 years and over may be committed on remand or sentenced to imprisonment to the four adult committal prisons (Mountjoy, Cork, Limerick and Portlaoise). Sentenced male offenders aged 16 and 17 may be transferred from any of the four committal prisons and from St. Patrick's Institution to Wheatfield Place of Detention, Fort Mitchel and Shanganagh Castle to serve their sentences. The age structure of the population in these institutions is relatively young and the regimes there place greater emphasis on education and work training for young offenders than the regimes in the committal prisons. Shanganagh Castle is an open centre reserved exclusively for male offenders aged 16-21 years.

Female offenders aged 17 years (and over) may be committed on remand or sentenced to imprisonment to Mountjoy and Limerick women's prisons. Female offenders aged 16 years and male offenders aged 15 years can be committed to prison only in exceptional circumstances. This can occur only in cases where the court certifies, under the provisions of section 97 and 102 of the Children's Act, 1908, that the young person is so unruly or depraved of character that she or he cannot be detained in a place of detention provided under Part V of the Act, i.e. a special school which comes under the aegis of my colleague the Minister for Education.

Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform (Mr. O'Donoghue)

I wish to inform the Deputy that the number of probation and welfare officers working with persons under the age of 18 is as follows:

	No. of Officers
Special Schools	3
(working exclusively with offenders under 17)
St. Patrick's Institution and Shanganagh	3
(working with offenders under 18, but not exclusively)
District Courts	97
(working with all offenders, including under 18s)

There has been no significant change in the number of officers assigned to the areas listed above in the past five years.

The exact numbers of under 18s dealt with by the probation and welfare service in the past five years is not readily available.