The Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice yesterday launched their review of the Irish Prison Service’s ‘Three Year Strategic Plan 2012-2015‘. At Buswells Hotel in Dublin, and joined by the former Prisoner Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, Pauline McCabe. ‘Making Progress?’ sounded a positive note with some reservations about speed of implementation.
Welcome developments include the roll-out of the Community Return Programme, which provides for structured release of some prisoners, as well as efforts to further the use of Integrated Sentence Management. Overall prison numbers have also fallen, and there have been significant improvements made to the facilities of Mountjoy Prison.
Pauline McCabe praised the commitment to reform, and cautioned that such commitment would be required for the long-term if the goals were to be realised. She particularly targeted the area of young people in prison and urged the development of a risk assessment tool for cell sharing.
Download the pdf of ‘Making Progress?’ here.
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