Magilligan visits cancelled at short notice

The report which looked into prisoner resettlement stated that although the officer found his role to be fulfilling, his post was on the diminishing task line – an area where the staffing complement can be regularly drawn from to fulfil duties in other areas.

This was in contradiction to the prison service’s family policy and resulted in child centred visits often being cancelled, sometimes at short notice.

A spokesperson for the Northern Ireland Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (NIACRO) said: “Any unjustifiable restriction on an inmate’s access to his or her family will impede chances of successful reintegration into the community on release, while restrictions can punish the extended family who has not been convicted of any criminal offence.”

The Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS) Family Strategy published in 2010 stresses the importance of family contact in rehabilitation as it states: “Children and families can play a significant role in supporting an offender to make and sustain changes which can reduce offending. In order to assist with this there is a need to support family relationships.”

NIPS stated that every effort had been put in to ensure that child centred visits went ahead as planned, but said that sometimes they had to be balanced against providing the entire prison population at Magilligan with a predictable regime.

A NIPS spokesman added: “The Governor has in the past regrettably had to re-deploy the Family Officer to other priority duties in order to ensure prisoners are provided with a regime that maximises time out of cell, and opportunities to attend activities including learning and skills programmes and work.”