Sex Offenders Ireland - Rehabilitation
Sex Offenders Ireland - Rehabilitation
To an extent this approach, certainly from the point of view of removing sex offenders from circulation, was the one taken by the State in Ireland up until recently, with relatively little focus on what would happen when that incapacitation ended with their release into the community .The Arbour Hill Sex Offender programme was introduced in 1994 and on paper it certainly met the required criteria as it was a structured, offence focused, programme with a cognitive behavioural approach in accordance with best practice elsewhere such as the US and UK. But there were obvious limitations from the outset because only 8 offenders could participate per year and by the end of 2008, 14 years later a mere 136 prisoners had completed the programme.
With this approach, the various Governments may as well have chemically or surgically castrated those who did not engage and were later released, for all the good prison would have done them. In Denmark chemical castration was implemented as a last resort when other measures failed. Surgical castration was offered on a voluntary basis to sexual offenders in Denmark between 1935 and 1970. This essay takes a look at recent examples of sex offenders in Ireland who have been let down by the system but there is a glimmer of hope. It also looks at the very limited amount of research carried out in this area here and aims to guide the reader through from the implementation of the 1994 programme to the very positive developments which have happened just this year which, its hoped, will prove to be a watershed in the rehabilitative process with regard to sex offenders here.
A number of sex offenders who've gone through the system of late and are relevant in terms of rehabilitation or the lack of it, include Michael Bambrick. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 1996 for two sex killings. He was released from Arbour Hill prison a number of weeks ago having served 13 years of that sentence. In 1991 he suffocated his former partner and mother of their two daughters to death after stuffing a stocking in her mouth during sex. He cut up her body and buried the remains. Just months later in 1992 he met single mother 36-year-old Mary Cummins in a bar in Dublin, he killed her in a similar fashion after tying her up and gagging her. Gardai investigated and he had previous convictions for sex offences. He confessed to the killings in 1995.
His much-publicised release happened on the 24th of April last but because the prison service cannot comment on individual cases its been impossible to find out whether he participated in or was accepted onto a rehabilitation programme and the question remains whether he's still high risk and whether he should have been released short of his sentence without adequate monitoring outside of prison and in the community.(Herald.ie,2009)
Repeat sex offender David Power from Thurles in Tipperary is the second example I feel is relevant. He was sentenced to life in jail in February for attacking and raping a woman while keeping his hand around her neck in a toilet in a fast food outlet in Tipperary two years ago. In October 2001 he was jailed for five years for sexually assaulting a prostitute in a car park and in 2002 he got three years for sexually another woman in Cork. During the sentencing hearing he said he'd tried to sign up for a number of treatment programmes while in jail but he said he wasn't successful. His mother, in an unusual move also pleaded with the judge to help her son saying that he'd been abused as a child.
This time around with the new programmes, in place it's more likely he'll be accepted to participate (CCC; Feb, 2009). The third example is former Garda Sergeant Kieran O'Halloran. In February 2003 he was jailed for two years for paying a woman to find a child for his for sex and for possessing child porn, the judge at the time directed that he undergo 20 years of post release supervision. Just over a year after his release from this sentence he committed an almost identical offence in 2005 and then again in April 2006 by offering prostitutes up to ten thousand euros to obtain for him children as young as five for sex. Judge Katherine Delahunt wanted to find out to what extent he had been supervised by both the Probation Service and the Granada Institute, which provides counselling, and treatment for sex offenders, when he was released in 2004. She later concluded that not only had the Probation Service been active in respect of Mr O'Halloran after his release but also said they had been consistently pro-active in the manner in which they had dealt with him. We also heard that he too he had been abused when he was young. (CCC;March 2009).
According to figures released by the Department of Justice last year, out of 299 sex offenders serving sentences at the time just 8 were taking part in a rehabilitation programme. By the end of last year 136 prisoners had completed the sex offender programme. The number of sex offenders in our prisons at the moment is around 300, which makes up around 8 percent of the total prison population.
The Sex Offender Programme, set up in Arbour Hill in 1994, concluded last year to allow for the implementation of updated models. That programme took up to 11 months to complete and only 8 offenders at a time could participate in it. It was a structured, offence -focused programme with a cognitive behavioural approach and a relapse prevention component (Murphy, 2002). Its aim was to reduce sexual victimisation through enabling offenders to gain increased control over offending behaviour. The programme was voluntary and group based.
According to Paul G Murphy programmes based on a cognitive behavioural theoretical model have consistently been shown to be the most effective in reducing offending. The very fact that only 8 offenders out of a sex offender prison population of up to 300 a year, were facilitated in a programme would seem to indicate that the State firstly not enough research had been carried out in this country to examine the matter thoroughly, best practice in other countries was not observed, to the author it would appear that the rehabilitative effort was something which was not high on the Department of Justice's and the various Government's list of priorities.
So were such offenders simply being incapacitated as the State hoped for the best?
Francesca Lundstrom prepared a report in 2002 for the Irish Prison Service on The Development of a New-Multi-disciplinary sex offender rehabilitation Programme. She carried out a critique of the Sex Offender Programme at the time and the respondents included offenders, people from the Irish prison service and the Department of Justice. The results of the study were interesting in that most of the respondents when asked said they would have favoured segregated prisons for sex offenders rather than integrated ones. In their responses, a number of prison officers said segregation led to more prisoners putting themselves forward for the programme.
Almost a third of those questioned including offenders were critical of the selection procedures for the sex offender programme, which they said precluded some offenders from taking part. Ms Lundstrom examined "What Works" in terms of other jurisdictions, Canada, Vermont and in some cases the UK. In Canada according to her research 25 percent of the prison population are sex offenders, In the UK it was ten percent and in the State of Vermont around 9 percent of the prison population at the time were there for sex offences. hen comparing the perceptions of the 59 respondents interviewed for this study from all levels of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Irish Prison Service, including sex offenders with practices in Canada and Vermont and the a lesser extent, the UK, it was evident that interventions provided for sex offenders in this jurisdiction are very different from those provided elsewhere, especially Canada and Vermont.(Lundstrom; 2002;p134.).
She said that in Ireland and the UK the Criminal Justice system separates the agencies responsible from their management in prison to their management and supervision in the community. She concluded that there were laws and structures in place in Canada and Vermont to assist in the seamless transition of sex offenders from prison into the community. She said that the vigorous record keeping about offenders' progress in Canada and Vermont assists them in establishing what interventions are effective. Canada and Vermont a sex offender is released on parole with special conditions, if they offend its straight back to prison and research shows this approach is effective in terms of recidivism. How to sell poor condition commercial property fast in London Stretching your holiday budget: celebrating the holidays a little early Blast Your Back With Triple Drop Pre-Exhaust Luxor Travel Package with Lake Nasser Cruise Fishing charters off Miami Beach are heating up as the fall moves in Perfume Country Review American Rare Earths & Materials (OTC:AREM) Takes Stand Against China: +40% Mark and Brian to host Halloween Costume Contest Halloween Color Contact Lenses - What You Need To Know Summer and the RV Covers How to Adapt for Your Consultation with Hotspring Spas Spa: Healing and Relaxation Karbonn Mobiles