Lack of facilities delays releases

Long-term inmates are being kept in prison despite being eligible for parole because there are no facilities on the outside to support them.

Last year three prisoners serving life sentences were denied early release because vital community supports were not available. All three have been in prison for over 17 years.

The Parole Board believed the three prisoners should be recommended to the minister for justice as meeting the criteria for release. However, the recommendations were not made because two of them had serious psychiatric difficulties and one had an intellectual disability.

“It was not possible to recommend them for temporary release because the essential community supports were not available,” said the chairman of the Parole Board, John Costello.

“As hundreds of prisoners have serious psychiatric or intellectual disability problems, this is going to become a more regular occurrence.,” he wrote in the board’s 2015 annual report.

Mr Costello cited Trinity College professor of psychiatry, Brendan Kelly, who called prisons “toxic for the mentally ill”.

The Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) suggested Ireland could be in breach of the UN’s standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners. Rule 110 states that “steps should be taken, by arrangement with the appropriate agencies to ensure, if necessary, the continuation of psychiatric treatment after release and the provision of social-psychiatric after-care”.

“Imprisonment should not be used as respite, nor as a means of providing an individual with access to services, such as counselling,” the IPRT stated. “Individuals should not be imprisoned or further punished because of their mental health issues.”

The Parole Board deals with prisoners serving life sentences or sentences over eight years. Last year it heard 76 new cases, the highest number since it was established in 2001. It interviews prisoners and can recommend to the minister for justice that they be released on supervised “temporary release” which can be revoked if the offender fails to fulfil specified conditions. Victims can make written submissions to the board before a recommendation is made.

“On many occasions these letters reveal enormous pain and suffering caused to victims,” said Mr Costello. “These letters are seriously considered by the board members before deciding on a recommendation.”

The board mainly deals with prisoners serving sentences for murder (45%) and sexual offences (19%). The minister for justice can reject a recommendation for early release but rarely does so in practice. In 2015, the minister accepted 88 of the board’s 89 recommendations.

Of the 76 new prisoners invited to seek parole in 2015, 34 declined. The vast majority of those who refused were eligible for 25% remission from their sentences which is almost always a much simpler and quicker path to early release than seeking parole.