Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): I welcome to the meeting Annabel Reid, who is a senior research officer, and Judith Bailie, who is the Justice research officer. Ladies, I will hand over to you. You will have 10 to 15 minutes to give your presentation, and then we will take some questions.

Ms Annabel Reid (Research and Information Service): Thank you, Chair. We are here today to give you a broad overview of mental health in the criminal justice system. We will provide some context around mental ill health in Northern Ireland before delving into a more specific focus on the criminal justice system. That will include the most common groups of people who come into contact with it. That includes professionals working as well as people in the police, prison and probation systems, including victims. Finally, we will touch on some innovative approaches from other jurisdictions. The scope of the paper was the mental health of adults in the criminal justice system, and that will be the focus of our briefing.

Let us first talk about mental ill health at population level. The Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) published a report in 2023 on mental health services in Northern Ireland. There are two key headline figures from that. First, it reported that Northern Ireland has the highest prevalence of mental ill health in the UK. The reasons behind that are twofold. First, we have greater levels of deprivation in Northern Ireland, which is a correlating factor. There is also a link to the legacy of the Troubles and living in a post-conflict society. The second headline figure from that report was the cost of mental ill health in Northern Ireland. That is estimated to be £3·4 billion. That was in 2019, so, in all likelihood, it has increased since then. The cost considers the wider cost to society, such as from care and treatment of mental ill health, as well as lost production to the economy. The Department of Health recognises mental illness as one of the four most significant causes of ill health and disability in Northern Ireland. The other three causes are cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and cancer. Mental health services represent around 6% of our overall health and social care budget.

The report by the Audit Office flagged that mental health funding has not kept pace with increases in the wider health budget. However, one important thing to consider, before I hand over to Judith, is that there is a scarcity of data on mental health. That is not just in the criminal justice system; it is across the board in Northern Ireland. That has been the subject of review by the Office for Statistics Regulation, and some work is under way on improving and harmonising how we collect that data, but initial estimates from that suggest that Northern Ireland's prevalence of mental ill health aligns more closely with our counterparts across the UK, so the figure that suggests that we have the highest prevalence might be inflated.

I will hand over now to Judith who will focus more on the criminal justice system.

Ms Judith Bailie (Research and Information Service): Thanks, Annabel, and thanks to the Committee for the opportunity to present to you all today.

The achievement of the justice system's objectives are often complicated by having to provide mental health services to the public. There are a variety of complex health and social factors that may contribute to people coming into contact with the criminal justice system. Some are highlighted on the screen and include adverse childhood experience, substance abuse and mental ill health. The reality is that some of those people may not have been in contact with key services in the community before entering the justice system.

It is clearly a difficult issue, but it is also not a new one. In 2010, Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland (CJINI) observed that mental ill health presents enormous challenges to the criminal justice system, and, in 2019, the Northern Ireland Audit Office observed that there is a clear risk that the justice system can become the "service of last resort" for those with mental health issues.

I will take a quick look at some of the approaches taken on mental health in recent years at a strategic level by the Executive and Departments. The Department of Health has played a key role, with the Bamford review being published in 2007. That was intended to facilitate the development of a long-term plan for improved provision of mental health services. That review also recommended that a new legislative framework for mental capacity and mental health law be created, resulting in the Mental Capacity Act (Northern Ireland) 2016. Since the publication of the Bamford review, we have seen major reviews of the transformation of health and social care delivery here, including Transforming Your Care in 2011 and the Bengoa report of 2016, both of which highlighted challenges for mental health services locally.

Since 2020, the Executive have established a working group on mental well-being, resilience and suicide prevention, and the Department of Health has appointed a mental health champion. We also saw the publication of a 10-year mental health strategy by the Executive in 2021. A funding plan was published alongside that strategy, estimating the total cost of implementation to be around £1·2 billion over its lifespan.

Specific strategies have been developed in relation to the criminal justice system that are discussed in further detail in the paper that was provided to you in advance of the meeting. It is worth highlighting the fact that the Department of Health and the Department of Justice jointly published the 'Improving Health Within the Criminal Justice System' strategy and action plan in 2019, which appears to have stemmed from a commitment in the Executive's strategic framework for public health, 'Making Life Better', which ran from 2013 to 2023. Other relevant strategies that are currently active in this space include an adult restorative justice strategy, which is running from 2022 to 2027; a strategy for ending violence against women and girls, which is running from 2022 to 2029; and Prisons 25by25. The existence of those strategies highlights the interconnection between Justice and Health in mental health service provision.

An issue that a number of the strategies across Health and Justice largely have in common is significant funding challenges. Substantial additional and sustained investment is required to address the level of need in this area, including the availability of psychological therapies and access to services for people during times of mental health crisis.

Finally, members will be aware that the draft Programme for Government (PFG) was published just this week. "Safer Communities" is identified as one of the nine strategic priorities. A number of the proposed actions are relevant in this area, including the development of:

There is also reference to focusing on:

Work to "embed trauma-informed, responsive systems" is also highlighted as an action to help people navigate and access support when they need it. The new document offers potential opportunities to develop plans and targets that are relevant to mental health service provision and the criminal justice system.

The PSNI is our largest criminal justice organisation and is the main interface between the justice system and the community. Responding to mental health-related incidents is becoming increasingly challenging for the service, particularly as its resourcing position has deteriorated in recent years. On the slide, you can see some figures that show the number of hours that the PSNI spends in hospitals with people in mental health crisis and the number of mental health-related calls being responded to. It is worth saying that it is likely that those figures do not show the full picture, and the PSNI is engaged in further work on that.

What is the PSNI doing to address the issue? It is working towards implementing the "Right care, right person" model, which is an operational model that seeks to direct people with health issues to the most appropriate service instead of the police acting as the default first responder. To date, the PSNI has established a "Right care, right person" programme board and an associated tactical group with a number of work streams. The service also ran a five-week data-gathering exercise with front-line supervisors in June and July to try to capture more information on the demand that a "Right care, right person" model would place on the service. It is clear that there must be a focus at the centre of planning and implementing "Right care, right person" to ensure patient safety so that individuals in health crisis are not left without support.

The model was first developed by Humberside Police in 2020. It is now in the process of being implemented in police forces across England and Wales, where it is also underpinned by a national partnership agreement between stakeholders that sets out the threshold for a police response to a mental health-related incident. I will give you some figures. Humberside Police identified that, before the introduction of the "Right care, right person" model, its police force was deployed to an average of over 1,500 incidents per month relating to issues such as concerns for welfare, mental health incidents or missing persons. As a result of implementing the model over three years, Humberside Police saw average incidents per month reduce by 508 deployments, which equated to over 1,100 officer hours and allowed resources to be dedicated elsewhere.

Turning to prisons and probation, the overall average daily prison population in Northern Ireland was over 1,600 in 2022-23, which represents an increase of 13% compared with 2021-22. Remand receptions also increased by 17% during 2022-23 from just over 2,700 to over 3,100.

The research highlights concerns over access to rehabilitation and support services for remand prisoners, as it is often limited. The Northern Ireland Prison Service has little scope to work with remand prisoners, as, often, those individuals have not been convicted of any offence. That is a particular issue for people who are later convicted and released due to time served, as, typically, they cannot access rehabilitation support.

The use of short custodial sentences is generally also recognised in the research as being ineffective. Barriers to accessing health and social care services on completion of a short sentence can hinder a person's rehabilitation and resettlement into the community. The need for greater collaborative working to ensure that mental health needs are dealt with in a multidisciplinary way prior to an individual's release from prison is highlighted in various reports as key to addressing issues in that area.

It is also worth considering the needs of certain groups in the criminal justice system, such as women and girls. Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland published a report in 2021 with a focus on how females in conflict with the law are treated. Women and girls are more likely to receive short prison sentences, but their impact can, obviously, be far-reaching, particularly for mothers and their children. The report reiterated the need for a new, small custodial facility for women that would be built, staffed and run on a therapeutic model and supported by an acute mental health facility. The prison review team originally made that recommendation in 2011.

A number of groups working to support victims of crime have also highlighted the detrimental impact that delay in the criminal justice system has on their mental health. The slides highlight figures published by the Department of Justice in August 2024 on case processing times for criminal cases between April 2023 and March 2024. The average time taken for a case to be dealt with at all courts was 190 days, a decrease of 8% from the previous year, but the figures, when broken down by offence category, highlight that the median time taken for cases where the main offence was sexual was 675 days. That is the longest of any of the offence categories but was also a decrease of 11% on the figures for 2022-23.

Sir John Gillen's review of serious sexual offences, published in 2019, highlighted the serious impact that delay in the system can have for complainants and defendants in that type of case. He also included a specific chapter on cross-examination of previous sexual history, which referred to:

There was a recommendation for the Department to carry out an exercise to determine the extent of admission of previous sexual experience in trials here.

Linked to that, the Commissioner Designate for Victims of Crime highlighted that the potential disclosure of third-party evidence can have a traumatic impact on the mental health of victims of sexual crime, with a suggestion that individuals can sometimes be forced to choose between justice and healthcare when deciding whether to attend counselling alongside going through the criminal justice system.

May 2024 marked five years since the publication of the Gillen review. Of the 253 recommendations, 135 have been implemented in that time, but there have been particular achievements that have assisted victims, such as remote evidence centres and the introduction of independent legal advisers.

The slide that you can see provides a brief overview of some issues relating to the mental health and well-being of staff working in the criminal justice system. The 'Chief Constable's Accountability Report to Northern Ireland Policing Board' for the period 2022-23 highlighted that at least one in five people who work in policing are experiencing a mental health condition. Concerns around the impact of workplace pressures on officers have been highlighted by the Police Federation for Northern Ireland on a number of occasions. The statistics on the slide show the average number of working days lost across prison grade staff for 2022-23, with over a third being due to anxiety, stress, depression or other psychiatric illnesses. There have also been innovations. A new staff well-being hub opened at Maghaberry prison in 2022 in an effort to provide additional support after critical incidents. The paper also reflects on a number of other professionals who are working in the system in a bit more detail.

I have already talked a bit about the "Right care, right person" model and some of the work being done in the PSNI, but it is worth taking a look at other useful problem-solving justice initiatives. Locally, we have a substance misuse court in operation at Laganside Court that is managed by the presiding magistrate. It seems, however, that budgetary pressures have had an impact in that area, as plans for a mental health court do not seem to have been progressed.

Trauma-informed approaches are also worth consideration by the Committee. The Scottish Government published a trauma-informed framework for working with victims and witnesses in the justice system in 2023. The Scottish Parliament also introduced the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill in 2023, which aims to embed a trauma-informed approach across the justice system by requiring all justice agencies to take steps to reduce retraumatisation. The Welsh Government have undertaken similar work, so it might be useful to consider that approach to trauma-informed practice further in the Northern Ireland context. A report from the Safeguarding Board for Northern Ireland (SBNI) and Queen's University Belfast in February 2024 recommended that a trauma-informed strategy resource hub and training framework be established in Northern Ireland.

Other work is ongoing in England and Wales. In 2023, legislation was introduced that provides that offenders can be released from prison only on working days that are not followed by a weekend or a bank holiday. The aim of that was to mitigate the risk of vulnerable prison leavers, who may have a mental health or drug issue, being released on a Friday and not having enough time to access vital services like healthcare or accommodation before services close for the weekend.

Elsewhere, the Prison Inreach and Court Liaison service was established in 2006 at Cloverhill prison in the Republic of Ireland. That multidisciplinary psychiatric service assists courts in identifying defendants with major mental illness and provides practical solutions to assessing what the appropriate mental health care would be for each defendant. Depending on the seriousness of the offence and the severity of the mental illness, prisoners may be diverted to a secure forensic hospital or a community mental health hospital.

That brings me to the end of the presentation. I will sum up the four key takeaways. First, many individuals in contact with the criminal justice system are repeat offenders who experience mental ill health. That presents significant challenges for the justice system, including policing and prisons. Police officers respond to an increasing number of mental health-related incidents, and the plans to roll out the "Right care, right person" model are aimed at directing people with mental health-related issues to the most appropriate service. Thirdly, Northern Ireland's prisons have a high number of people with mental ill health, and access to rehabilitation and support services can, at times, be limited for prisoners who are on remand. Barriers to accessing mental health services on completion of a sentence can also hinder a person's rehabilitation and resettlement in the community. Fourthly, there is a need for interconnection between Health and Justice across those areas and for joint funding to address issues around mental health provision. Some of the innovations that I touched on in the previous slide show the potential available through embedding trauma-informed approaches when dealing with individuals in contact with the justice system.

That broad overview covered quite a few areas, but, if the Committee wants me to go away and look at anything in particular, I am happy to do that and to provide more detail. We will try to answer your questions.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Thanks very much, Judith and Annabel. I commend you on a great paper. Your last point was about collaboration between Health and Justice. That is exactly why we are looking at the issue and, in particular, the "Right care, right person" model. We have concerns that prison may not be the best place for people who end up incarcerated, and there are the support issues too.

I will open the floor to members. I will ask a few questions at the end.

Mr Bradley: Thanks very much for the presentation, which highlights an awful lot of issues that need to be resolved. At a meeting this morning, Ciara and I heard that the incidence of mental health issues in Northern Ireland is higher than it is anywhere else in the UK and Ireland. Your presentation touches on a lot of the bases that we heard about.

I am really concerned about the time that our PSNI officers spend in A&E departments across the country and the time that they are tied down for as they wait for the person whom they are looking after, either a prisoner or someone with a mental health issue, to be triaged and processed. Once that happens, the person is either let out without being given care or guidance or being pointed to the right place, put on a ward or arrested and taken to a station. There are long delays, and a long number of hours are used up. Plus, there is the mental stress and strain that that puts on individual officers who are not performing their duty but are being nursemaid in an A&E situation that they are not used to.

I would like to see more work and discussion between Health and Justice, which the Chair mentioned, to alleviate the length of time that officers spend in A&E departments doing not their job but that of a mental health professional, which, normally, they are not qualified to do. They have some qualifications — do not get me wrong — but that is not their field of expertise. You talked about mental health in the justice system. The type of activity that we are discussing has a massive bearing on the individual officer, never mind any other department as it moves along. The Health Department and the Justice Department need to sit down and formulate some sort of policy that takes the weight off officers and provides the care that people need when they go to hospital suffering from a mental health-related incident or illness.

Ms Bailie: Certainly, the "Right care, right person" model is an interesting one to look at. The PSNI is engaging with the Department of Health and other stakeholders in the process of looking at that. As part of that, it is important that there is a clear and shared understanding of when it is and is not appropriate for a police officer to be deployed to a particular incident. It is certainly an interesting model that is worth further exploration by the Committee.

Ms Reid: To follow on from Judith's point, the paper has some figures on the hours that PSNI officers spend in hospitals, and those cover the period from 1 January 2023 to 14 April 2023. We will look at whether we can get more data on that. For that quarter, the figure was 4,550. We will work to put that into a bit more context to see what it means, if that would be helpful.

Mr Bradley: Thank you very much.

Ms Ferguson: Thank you, Annabel and Judith, for your detailed report. It is great see all the innovative practices that are being utilised and have been in operation for 20-plus years in other areas.

The level of repeat offending and, likewise, the lack of rehabilitation are no surprise to any of us. It would be interesting to drill down into the cohort of people concerned. We have heard today that there are key groups of individuals. It would be useful to drill down into that to get an idea of the impact on males, females and children in care. It would be useful to get that information to paint a picture of the individual behind the stats. Many of the cases that I deal with involve vulnerable young men who have been diagnosed with a mental health condition, are heavily medicated and end up in the justice system. Their families are crying out for support.

That is a big issue, and, relative to the cases that I deal with, it is getting bigger. I am really interested in this because we need to get behind the individuals. To have a few case studies would be brilliant.

Ms Reid: We will definitely have a look. I will say up front that there are real issues with the data in that area. We will see what figures are out there and look at their robustness and reliability. It is a problem across the board — prisons, police and probation — but there will definitely be something that we can look into.

Ms Ferguson: I will ask about one other area that I am keen on. Administrative data and data linkages are critical. I recently raised that with the Department of Finance because, from speaking to a lot of people, I feel that there seem to be huge issues. What is the ideal data? What data is there that may be available but that you cannot access? We need to unpack that. The more informed we are, the better the research, which will tell us a lot more about what we need to do. There is an issue not just for the justice system but across Departments: how can we improve research by making better administrative data available? Anything that you have on that would be useful.

Mr Dickson: The previous Justice Committee interacted with the problem-solving courts, which were proven to be successful, particularly on substance abuse. We need to move that on into the area of mental capacity. A lot of the skill set used by judges in respect of substance abuse is transferable skill that can be used in this area, particularly when it comes to "Right care, right person". Arguably, it is also about the right court in the right place.

When we come to enquire further into all of this, we need to look at things that are more for the Department of Health than the Department of Justice. Having sat in A&E and watched police officers struggle with patients who are challenged and difficult, I have seen that they are often just very loud. They will often make unusual moves. I have seen them handcuffed, and I have seen them there on a voluntary basis, in preparation, perhaps, for further action. We need to work with and challenge the Department of Health on those circumstances. Is it necessary for police officers to be there? That may not always be necessary. The Department of Health, rather than police officers, should perhaps provide an element of — I was going to use the word "security" — care for patients. That might reduce the time spent. It would also be helpful, if possible, to find quiet spaces for people coming into A&E.

The point that Ciara makes about young men spills over into housing and into antisocial behaviour or behaviour that is perceived to be antisocial, much of which is brought about by mental health issues.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Do you want to comment, or are you happy that you have other areas to look into?

Ms Reid: We will definitely look more at "Right care, right person". That is definitely about getting access to the right health and other professionals. It would be really beneficial to chat to Humberside Police about how that worked in practice and maybe put together a case study with more detail. That would be useful.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Good. I have a couple of questions about Humberside Police.

Mr Beattie: Annabel and Judith, that was an excellent report: thank you very much. Looking at the workforce in the criminal justice system, I am struck by two figures. One in five police officers reports experiencing mental ill health. In relation to that figure of one in five officers, it would be really interesting to know whether all of those cases where mental health issues were created were work-related or whether other issues were affecting them. It would be the same for prison staff, among whom 36% of sick days were due to anxiety, stress and depression. It would be really interesting to know whether that is all due to work pressures or is caused by external pressures. It would be useful if we could find that out.

That leads me to something else that I would really like to look at. In the Prison Service, 36% of sick days taken were due to anxiety, depression and other mental health issues. However, if we look at the Northern Ireland Civil Service staff handbook, we see that it does not allow for the excusal of sick absence for anything to do with psychological or mental health issues. It allows only for injury, disease and assault. If somebody says that they are off with stress, anxiety and depression due to their workload and asks to be excused as off sick, it will not even be looked at, because the handbook does not allow it to be looked at. I do not know whether there is any way that we can look at that and engage with the Department of Justice so that it can engage with the Finance Minister to see whether we can amend that handbook to include those reasons. I am aware of one female prison officer who was off sick due to threats of sexual violence and was not allowed excusal of sick absence, because it was not deemed as being due to injury, disease or assault.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): It is as though we had a mind meld, Doug. I concur with you on that, and I had questions about it. My question was about whether the one in five police officers included staff. We all know that particularly those in the public protection branch but anybody involved on the front line to that extent see horrendous things that will probably never leave them. Those things are bound to have a psychological impact. Likewise, in the Prison Service, we have been to visit Hydebank, and, although we did not see it, we heard people in severe crisis. Statistics published this week indicated that the DOJ has the highest level of sickness of all Departments. There are issues around protection for those people, and the police moving them around inside the system does not necessarily cut it. It is about what occupational health is available. We know that there are difficulties and delays there.

Mr Beattie: We should certainly look at that staff handbook. I will not mention the person, but, in that case, they were told that work-related stress is not physical assault, so they were not looked at for any form of excusal for being off sick. That is not acceptable.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): No, you are absolutely right, and it should be looked at, particularly for jobs like this. In the case of those working in public protection, I have heard of officers and staff who, day in and day out, have to see at first hand or type details of rapes, murders, child sexual exploitation and abuse and all of those things. I am not clear on how the Civil Service expects that not to have a psychological impact on somebody. That was a valid and well-made point, Doug. Thank you for that contribution.

Mr McNulty: Thank you, Annabel and Judith. This is a serious piece of work: it is methodical, detailed and professional. Where were the "Golly gosh" moments for you in your research and observations? What is the mechanism by which that will be brought to light for the Department of Justice? Is there any information that made you wonder whether the Justice Minister knew about it? What is the mechanism by which that will be fed back? Is it via the Committee, or how does that happen? Who sees the crucial research that you have undertaken?

Ms Reid: There is a lot of detail that we can go into. This is just a broad overview of what is happening in the sector. The "Golly gosh" moments will be when you get into those details. This report is light-touch; there is so much that you can go into and so many avenues that you can go down for further exploration. Do you have any thoughts on that, Judith?

Ms Bailie: We have taken a broad overview. There are, potentially, lots of avenues to go down. Some of the figures are shocking.

Ms Reid: Yes, absolutely.

Ms Bailie: There is definitely a lot in it that could be explored further.

Ms Reid: This paper was prepared to brief the Committee, and it will be available on the Assembly website. There is also lots of research ongoing in the Department of Justice, which we included in this. As I said, it is a broad overview.

Mr McNulty: Prisons have a high number of people with mental ill health. Your report states:

which was up from 2021-22. To what do you attribute that 17% spike? To what extent are those on remand suffering ill mental health as a consequence of being on remand having been convicted but not sentenced? To what extent do you attribute mental ill health to that scenario?

Ms Reid: Sorry, will you repeat that?

Mr McNulty: To what do you attribute the 17% spike year-on-year? Why did it happen? To what extent is ill mental health being experienced as a consequence of being on remand without being sentenced?

Ms Reid: We are not able to extrapolate that here today. We can go away and look further at what the motivating factors behind that spike might be. We can do that, if that would be helpful.

Mr McNulty: OK. The last thing from your report is that it states that complainants in cases involving sexual crime:

Please expand on that.

Ms Bailie: That was mainly from a report by the Commissioner Designate for Victims of Crime. The commissioner published a report on that last year. It surveyed a number of victims. One of the key findings from that was that individuals who are going through the court process feel that they are having to choose between accessing counselling or going through the criminal justice process, because they are concerned about the potential disclosure of those records as part of the case.

Mr McNulty: That is a startlingly scary reality, surely.

Ms Reid: Absolutely. When we were compiling the paper, we wanted to make sure that we included the information around impact on victims. Often, the focus is on people in the system, but there is also a lot of impact on victims.

Mr McNulty: Thank you, ladies.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): The Clerk has said that, if you like and if the Committee agrees, we could send the research paper to the Department or the ministerial office for their information. It might be helpful for them to have it. Are members happy with that?

Ms Ferguson: I have a follow-up question. It relates page 21 of your paper. You mentioned the ongoing work that the PSNI has been involved in through the multi-agency triage team to get the right person to the right care. It was piloted in 2018, but it seems that it continues to run through the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust. I know that it has issues with additional staff capacity. The pilot has been operating for the past six years. It has to be a multi-agency team; we have noted that. The PSNI cannot be left to pick up the pieces at the tail end. We need that multi-agency team at the early intervention stage. Could we write to the PSNI or the trust to get a presentation on it or to get updated information on the lessons learned and the implications and impact of the system and details of what the ideal multi-agency team would be?

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): I imagine that the police would be happy to do that. I recall, during my time on the Policing Board, that there had been ongoing funding issues. At one stage, the Department was looking at pulling out, and it was going to be left to the police. It has proven to be extremely useful to divert people, keep them out of the system and provide them with the help that they need. Yes, I am sure that we can do that. Do members agree that we get further information on that?

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): I have a couple of questions on issues that, for the most part, have been mentioned. Page 3 of your report refers to barriers to people getting help — you mentioned it a couple of times in your presentation, Judith. It talks about:

Will you give us a couple of examples of how that would happen? What are those barriers?

Ms Bailie: Probably the main issue is ensuring that, once an individual leaves prison, they have access to support around healthcare, employment opportunities, housing and things such as that. It really comes back to there being a multidisciplinary approach to ensuring that support services are available.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Essentially, it is the preparation in advance. Did your research pick up what the barriers are for somebody who is getting out? Is it that they are being sent to places that are not their home town and where they do not have family support? What are the barriers to accessing the services? Is it that they are registered with a GP elsewhere?

Ms Reid: We can look into that a little more. Quite a broad overview is that housing was a big thing, because you need an address to be able to register with your GP. One of the approaches that we discussed was not releasing people at the weekend. GPs are not open at the weekend. Quite often, prisoners are released on a Friday, but they are unable to access that care immediately. They are left over the weekend. That is a short-term thing, but we can definitely look into it.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): You have taken me on to a couple of my other points, which are about the weekend. Page 22 of your report — again, you spoke about it, Judith — mentions police referrals to other agencies. That refers to police who already have the "Right care, right person" operational model in place. When the police have decided that they are to refer on because of "Right care, right person", have the services been available, and are the services in the places where that model exists available on evenings and at weekends? It seems that part of the issue is that there is an expectation that mental health crises will happen 9.00 am to 5.00 pm, Monday to Friday. If people are at their lowest ebb and in a downward spiral, they will be in a difficult position if there is nowhere to go to access help. It often means that people, including juveniles, as we have read in reports, are kept in custody because that is the safest place. Custody really should not be the place for people in mental health crisis. What goes on in those other places when the police decide to refer on? Do you know, or do you need to look into that?

Ms Bailie: I probably need to have a wee look into that and come back to you, if that is all right.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): It is important to know what services are available in the other places.

I have a question about disclosure, but it may not be for you to answer; we may need to find out from the victims' commissioner or the judiciary. I presume that people have to weigh up whether they want to go to counselling, given the potential for counselling notes to be disclosed in a trial, and there may be things that people do not want to be disclosed. My understanding is that the only person who sees everything is the judge, that the judge decides what will be disclosed and that, even then, it is only what is relevant. It is highly important for people in that situation to understand that that is how the process works. I would like assurances or information on whether people who are in that position and feel that they have to make that choice are informed and advised. It is not just about being told, "Oh, this could be disclosed"; it is about how it would be disclosed and why. They should be told that the only person who has access to the entirety of their notes is the judge. That may well make a difference for people. It could purely boil down to education on the system. Again, it may not be for you to answer.

Let me check whether I have anything else. You stated in your paper that the Republic of Ireland has mental health courts. I would be interested in some more detail around that, such as how that works, who is referred there and what happens before, during and after a mental health court approach.

I appreciate that a Bill is imminent, but I am aware that, if we are to proceed on the issue, the Executive programme on paramilitarism and organised crime (EPPOC) does a lot of work around trauma-informed practice. We see that more and more. I wonder whether the Committee might be interested in having a briefing from the trauma-informed practice people. It would tie in with our work with EPPOC and on issues such as this to understand how that might work in the justice system. I was at the Restorative Justice Council' s conference last Friday. I attended the fringe seminar on restorative practice in prisons. There was a lot of information there about trauma-informed practice. It could be useful for the Committee to see the extent to which that happens in our justice system, the areas that are being looked into and how that works in practice. Would members be interested in that, if we had time to build it into the programme?

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Thank you.

Basically, ladies, what has happened is that you have given us a great presentation, and we have sent you away to get even more information. We know that there are considerable levels of prisoner substance abuse. We also know that there are issues with special educational needs (SEN), prisoners who have not been statemented, speech and language therapy (SLT) and those kinds of things. So that we can get an idea of what happens with people who are going through the system, it would be helpful to have some statistics on and a breakdown of the number of prisoners with special educational needs; the number who have not been statemented but with whom, the service can see, there are problems; the number who have communication difficulties because of SLT requirements and so on; and the number with substance addiction and all of that type of thing. We know what the key reasons are. You cited homelessness, but how many are homeless?

One of the issues for me was about Inverary House, which we mentioned, and it will, potentially, be on our forward work programme. I know from my visit there that people who have been through the experience are coming out with nowhere to go and no access. They say, "It's like we're being set up to fail". Even if they have a house or flat, it is empty, and it takes 10 days to get emergency money to buy furniture. All of those practical things can just leave people over a weekend thinking, "I am stuck here in this dank, furniture-less flat with nothing and nobody", and the quick release is to buy drugs from the people who, they know, can supply them. That would be helpful.

Thank you very much. I think that that was all that I had.

Ms Ferguson: I do not want to throw more work at you, but we are well aware of the high level of mental health issues across the North, which is reflected in the high levels of mental health issues among young offenders and those on remand. What about the international picture? I am conscious, too, that we need to look at the system. Is there any research about offenders in prisons and the negative impact that being there may or may not have on mental health? Are there improvements through rehabilitation, or does it become worse through rules and regulations in the prison system or breaches of them? I have never come across any such work, but I would be interested to know whether any work has been done in that area. If we are looking at mental health across the board, we need to look pre the offence, offences while in prison and offences when people come out of prison We have a high level of repeat offending as well.

We need to take a seamless approach to any research that we do. If there is any research, it would be interesting to get it referenced so that we can read up on it.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): You have reminded me about something else, Ciara: the Friday thing. It is in your report about the Friday release, and I appreciate that other jurisdictions have that in legislation or regulation. I am fairly certain that we received evidence from the Prison Service, and, at one point, they indicated that, as a practice, they try not to release on Fridays, bank holidays and so on. However, they do that out of goodwill. Could we check that? The other side of it is that it is not just about Fridays. Sometimes, a person is released, and the Prison Service does not get them to the Housing Executive on time, or they should be released but the Housing Executive does not have time to sort them out. It would be interesting to have some information on that. I have tabled an Assembly question anyway about the number of people released from prison who do not have accommodation lined up. It would be helpful for us to have some understanding of that process because the Prison Service does it out of goodwill rather than obligation, recognising that it is not a good thing to do.

Once again, ladies, I thank you very much. The extent to which the session has overrun indicates our interest in the subject. Now, we have given you a few more burrows to go down.

Ms Reid: Yes, it is all good.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Thank you very much indeed.