31st January 2002
This Report, published by the National Economic and Social Forum, examines how the cycle of recidivism can be broken by the effective re-integration of offenders into mainstream society. The Report focuses on prisoners from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are at high risk of marginalisation on release, and are repeat offenders or at risk of re-offending.
Given the broad consensus in recent years that prison should be used as a last resort, the Report sets out to examine why policy implementation has been so slow in this area, and what barriers and obstacles have been in the way of implementation.
The Report concludes that the missing link between policy design and agreement on the one hand and policy implementation on the other hand has been the lack of coherent implementation mechanisms or models to be followed. The Report gives recommendations for implementation of policy at national level, prison level and prisoner level, including a range of multi-disciplinary initiatives aimed at effective re-integration.
Respect for rights in the penal system with prison as a last resort.