Illegal drugs and limitations to education and employment at Magilligan jail highlighted by NIAO

'Reducing Adult Reoffending in NI' points to recent Criminal Justice Inspection NI (CJINI) visits that deemed the accessibility of narcotics to be a continuing issue at the Derry jail.

"Alongside targeted support, preventing drugs being smuggled into prisons is key to rehabilitating offenders with addiction issues, and ensuring prisoner and staff safety.

"A 2018 inspection of Maghaberry found that availability of illegal drugs had been successfully reduced, however concerns were subsequently raised in 2022 at Magilligan due to high positive test levels and inadequate oversight of in-possession medication," according to the report published by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Dorinnia Carville, on Tuesday.

The CJINI inspections have also highlighted limitations to the educational and employment offerings at the jail, the NIAO report states.

"Recent CJI inspections in Maghaberry (2018) and Magilligan (2022) assessed prisoner outcomes for ‘purposeful activity’ (including learning and skills) as ‘not sufficiently good’ (paragraph 4.6), with various concerns highlighted including, for example, the curriculum being too narrow, long waiting lists for popular courses, insufficient focus on improving literacy, numeracy and ICT skills, and limited contact with employers and the workplace,” it observes.

The report notes that progress had been made against the goals of the NI Prison Service’s continuous improvement strategy to 2020 which aimed ‘to create a modern and affordable prison service, capable of rehabilitating those in its care’.

"This continued focus on formal reform by NIPS may have contributed to some improvement, with CJI reporting progress in the four healthy prison tests by 2020.

"In particular, rehabilitation and resettlement work was assessed as ‘good’ (the highest score) across the three prison sites, although ‘purposeful activity’ (prisoner engagement in activities likely to benefit them, including learning and skills) still required improvement,” the audit report found.

The arrival of COVID-19 impeded progress in the Co. Derry prison, however.

"A 2022 inspection at Magilligan later identified performance slippage reflecting, to a large extent, the impact of the pandemic, although the report also highlighted wider challenges for the prison service, including the effectiveness of the prison’s drug and alcohol strategy, and the standards of cleanliness in some parts of the prison,” the report says.

Ms. Carville said: “This report recognises that reducing reoffending is extremely challenging. Many factors that can prevent reoffending, such as good physical and mental health, accommodation, education and employment, sit outside the scope of the justice system.

"In addition, the Department of Justice and other key statutory stakeholders are facing major financial pressures. We note there is a strong commitment to tackling this issue, but increased cross-government working is now required, along with a more clearly defined strategic direction that identifies the key actions, targets and expected outcomes required.”

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“Today’s report highlights the need for the justice system to focus on the systemic issues which are making it more difficult to rehabilitate ‘hard-to-reach’ prolific offenders trapped in a cycle of offending and reoffending.”

Commenting on the report, Ronnie Armour, Director of Reducing Offending at NIPS said: “Some individuals coming into the prison system have many requirements and issues that need addressed.

"These include physical and mental health problems; difficulties with educational attainment; provision of safe, secure accommodation; and unemployment. If we are to truly tackle levels of reoffending we need a system-wide approach with a key focus on these factors.”

Over the last 10 years, there has been a downward trend in the number of adults released from custody or receiving non-custodial disposals, as well as a corresponding reduction in the number who reoffend. Of those who do reoffend, almost half do so within the first three months.

Mr. Armour said: “Many reoffenders live chaotic lifestyles and whilst the prison service is committed to offering them the very best chance of a fresh start, we need to equip them with the ability to desist from their offending behaviour.

"We need to address the fundamental environmental factors that lead them to reoffend.”

In conclusion Mr. Armour reiterated the NIPS’s commitment to working across government and with a range of partners to further reduce the rate of reoffending.

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SDLP Justice Spokesperson Sinéad McLaughlin MLA has called for a renewed focus on reducing reoffending.

“Reducing reoffending should be a top priority for our justice system. The fact that 16 per cent of adult offenders reoffended within twelve months in 2019-20 will be cause for real concern that our system is not effectively dealing with this complex issue.

“The failure to properly invest in rehabilitation programmes risks trapping people in a cycle of behaviour that is damaging not just to them but to wider society. In the context of extreme budgetary pressures, when the system itself is on the brink of collapse, I am really concerned that the type of initiatives that reduce reoffending and help to rehabilitate offenders will be deprioritised, despite the huge cost for reoffending in the longer term.

“This issue requires significant cross-departmental working to tackle the root causes of reoffending. That means investing in programmes around education and employment as well as dealing with challenges related to accommodation, mental ill health and substance misuse. We also need much more robust NI specific-data and estimates around the economic and social cost of reoffending here.

“This is just one of the many issues that will be on the in-tray of the next Justice Minister and as the Stormont Opposition, the SDLP will be holding the department and wider Executive accountable for meaningful and realistic outcome-based performance measures so we can finally get to grips with this issue once and for all.”

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