The Government’s prison reform programme has received a broadly positive report card from a religious order of the Catholic Church.
Commenting on the implementation of the Prison Service’s Three Year Strategic Plan 2012-2015, the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice described it as an “imaginative and innovative” development of prison policy.
But it also noted what it terms “some worrying deficiencies and delays in the implementation process”.
The Jesuits made their views known at the
launch this afternoon of Making Progress? which the order describes as
its analysis of the implementation of a one year implementation plan of
the longer strategic plan.
The report was launched
by Pauline McCabe, former Prisoner Ombudsman for Northern Ireland. She
praised both Minister for Justice Alan Shatter
and the Prison Service for their work in trying to reform Irish prisons
to make incarceration less likely for non-violent crimes and prison
regimes more in line with best modern practices.
Eoin Carroll,
advocacy officer at the Jesuit Centre, said there had been “positive
developments” over the past year but added: “Promised strategies in
relation to the detention of women and young people in prison have not
yet been developed.”
Father Peter McVerry, who
works with the centre, said the government had made “a very welcome
start . . . to address the pressing problem of overcrowding”.
He added: “However, there is still a long way to go to achieve the desired target of having one prisoner per cell.”