REHABILITATION OR JAIL TO CUT REOFFENDING

A court offering young offenders a choice between court-supervised
rehabilitation and jail could significantly reduce reoffending, a High
Court judge told a conference last night.

A drugs court of this kind is to be established as an experiment this
year, the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform confirmed.

Mr Justice Robert Barr told a conference on "The Marginalised Child"
in Dublin that such an approach would help address "the greatest
injustice in contemporary Irish life, our failure as a caring society
to take sufficient steps to rescue from crime those who are born to it
and have the misfortune of existence without reasonable support in the
marginalised economically and socially deprived fringes of our society."

The conference, chaired by Mr Justice Peter Kelly, was organised by
the Lillie Road Centre, which has three children's homes in London and
is establishing a home in Edenderry, Co Offaly.

"Research and experience have established beyond serious controversy
that custodial prison sentences, though probably inevitable as
punishment for major crime, rarely achieve rehabilitation of the
criminal and are often counterproductive," Mr Justice Barr said.

"I believe that rehabilitation of juvenile and young offenders from
the marginalised outer fringes of our society is most likely to be
achieved on a voluntary basis."

This would involve a carrot-and-stick approach. The accused would be
offered drugs treatment, residential if necessary, counselling,
education and job-training. "The essence of the carrot is that no
stigma attaches to voluntary custody and top-quality detoxification is
on offer."

The stick, he said, would be monthly monitoring by the court and a
jail term for those who failed to fully comply.

"The selected offenders are likely to regard the proposed scheme of
rehabilitation as being substantially more attractive than a term of
imprisonment, and in my view the probability is that they will not
lightly throw away the apparent advantages which it offers."

But he warned that the programme would fail unless, when it was over,
participants got a backup service in the form of hostel accommodation,
if needed, and continuing job-training.

Sister Stanislaus Kennedy of Focus Ireland said that within six months
of leaving care, almost a third of young people experienced
homelessness.

"Many of the young people leaving care return to their families or go
to other relatives, very often going right back into the problematic
family situations from which they were taken into care in the first
place."

Young people leaving care were expected to achieve
instant maturity and to be able to live independently at a very early age,
often with very little support.