NI: Rehabilitation of offenders consultation responses and next steps

21st February 2022

The report on a consultation on proposals to reform rehabilitation periods in Northern Ireland has been published by the Department of Justice NI. The consultation ran from 8 January 2021 to Friday 12 March 2021 and received 77 responses. 41 of the responses were from organisations and 36 were from members of the public.

Key findings:

• 97% of respondents thought that rehabilitation periods should be reduced
• 94% supported a review of the current custody limit of 30 months – with 99% of these respondents favouring some form of a more progressive regime

Following the consultation, the Minister was presented with 4 options for moving forward with rehabilitation legislation. The Minister, having considered all of the information provided, will progress with plans for a hybrid scheme with a fixed upper limit of a conviction for any offence of up to 10 years imprisonment. The proposed new sentence limits and associated rehabilitation periods are available on p.24 of the consultation report.

You can read the consultation report - including quotes from respondents - here.
 

Consultation on reform of spent convictions was carried out by the Department of Justice in the Republic in October 2020. According to the Department of Justice, 755 survey responses were received, along with 73 written submissions – this speaks to the wide-reaching impact and interest in spent convictions. 

More recently, the Criminal Justice (Rehabilitative Periods) Bill 2018 passed through the Seanad in June 2021 and is due to return to the Dáil for Second Stage debate.

For more on IPRT’s work on spent convictions, visit www.iprt.ie/spent-convictions