Sir, - The Government rightly talks tough on crime, but wrongly fails to deliver on public safety. Taxpayers have been entered unwittingly into a financial commitment of £1 billion (capital and current) over the next decade on additional prison space. This is against the advice of every authoritative report on the management of offenders. Critically, within that £1 billion there has been a refusal to invest in a structure of rehabilitation. Hence the scandal continues of sexual offenders released without treatment, inadequate prison drug treatment programmes and the total absence of even a single welfare officer for Mountjoy Women's Prison.
Last month, the Government announced the Prisons Authority Interim Board. The Probation and Welfare Branch of IMPACT expected that the new organisational structure would prove a catalyst, break moulds, belong to the future not the past. The new ethos would be one of challenging offending behaviour and not simply the hopeless warehousing of inmates.
The Government announced the membership of that Interim Board. Its members are people of merit from business, professions, trade unions and administrative backgrounds; broader and more numerous than was recommended in the reports of the Expert Group (February 1997). Remarkably, the rehabilitation function has been excluded from the Interim Authority Board. I refer to education, psychology and the Probation and Welfare Service.
The services of psychology, education and Probation and Welfare play a key role in interrupting patterns of offending and re-offending. These services are essential in the fight against crime and can deliver greater safety to the public. Rehabilitation is core prison business. Representation of the rehabilitation function at board level is one way a commitment to public safety can be demonstrated. - Is mise,
Patrick O'Dea, PRO, Probation and Welfare Branch, IMPACT, Poppintree Mall, Finglas, Dublin 11.