Saoirse Brady

And it's that revolving door that we're just not getting to the bottom of.

And part of this is around what supports are available in prison.

To everything.

But I suppose what we do know is that people from marginalised communities are overrepresented in prison.

And very often the drugs that they are taking are things like crack cocaine, they're opioids, and those are very serious.

We also know that there's a lot of synthetic opioids, which have really...

powerful consequences for people.

They really interact and interfere with people's health to the point where we've seen a number of overdoses in prison itself.

So we really need to be treating that.

We really need to think about who is providing that physical support so we know that there are supports in prison.

certainly in terms of therapy.

But when we think about ring-fenced addiction nurses for people coming in with physical issues who need to detox, who need to be assessed, who need to know what they need, an opioid replacement, for example, like methadone, then we need to actually put money and investment into that, both investment into the staff and investment into the individuals coming into the care and custody of the prison service.

So it's a very volatile situation because you have people who are in addiction.

And at the moment, because of the overcrowding situation, there's very little floor space even left in prison cells.

So you're talking about two, three people sharing a cell.

Maybe one or two of those may have an addiction issue.

They're in crisis.

And it's what led what's led them to offend in the first place very often.

And they're not getting the help and support that they need.

So their tensions are high.