Six prisoners ‘released immediately’ after errors in sentences discovered
One hundred and two prisoners had their sentences extended and 29 had their release date brought forward. Picture: Irish Times
Justice Minister Helen McEntee has ordered an independent investigation after six prisoners had to be “released immediately” from custody after errors in calculating their sentences were discovered.
Following an incident in late 2020 when a prisoner was recaptured having been released early in error, a review of 4,000 cases was undertaken and in 131 cases errors were discovered.
According to the Department of Justice, the outcome of these reviews was that a “small percentage” of the almost 4,000 sentences examined resulted in prisoner release dates needing to be put back, or brought forward, as the case might be.
In addition to 102 prisoners whose sentences had to be extended, 29 had their release date brought forward and six were “required to be released immediately”, the minister said.
The reasons for inaccurate sentence calculations included erroneous start dates where a prisoner had multiple warrants, incorrect linking of consecutive and concurrent warrants, warrants not recorded after appeals, and misinterpretation of warrants, she said.
The review of the 4,000 cases involved an examination of all sentence calculation generally and an examination of credit for time served, have now been completed and the Prison Service has submitted its final report to Ms McEntee.
She has said this report makes a number of recommendations to prevent such errors from reoccurring and these are being actioned, including a recommendation to undertake an external review, which has now been commissioned.
The minister revealed that on foot of one such instance, in October 2021, a prisoner lodged a legal challenge in the High Court, under Article 40 of the Constitution, to his continued detention.
While the application was unsuccessful, the High Court decision was overturned in the Court of Appeal and the individual was released from custody.
Following this decision, all files impacted by the judgement were re-examined and, where necessary, sentences were re-calculated and amended.
Ms McEntee added that, in order to provide further assurance and to support and validate the internal review carried out by the Prison Service, it is proposed to commence an external review of the policies, processes and procedures in operation for the calculation of prisoner sentences by a suitably qualified person with detailed knowledge of sentence calculation.
Questions have been raised by TDs in recent weeks after an inspection of the Office of Inspector of Prisons of Castlerea Prison which reported that “a large number of prisoners reported to the inspection team that their release dates had recently been extended without explanation”.
The team behind the report said that a prison officer confirmed that extensions had seemingly been made to release dates for a number of prisoners.
The inspection team raised this issue with senior management, who reported that the IPS had commissioned a review of all sentence calculations across the prison estate in the spring of 2021, which resulted in all sentences being audited.
The report stated that a component of that review included the calculation of credit days applied to prisoner sentences.
