FIS is an organisation with some 114 affiliate organisations within England and Wales. Further details about FIS and its activities can be found at www.irishsocieties.org and in the organisation's annual reports.

FIS's interest in this consultation is largely through the relatively high representation of Irish people (including Irish Travellers) within the prison and wider criminal justice systems. Two of our affiliates, the Irish Travellers Movement (ITM) and the Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas (ICPO), direct their services towards Irish Travellers and Irish prisoners. In addition, many of FIS's other affiliates include Irish Travellers and other marginalised Irish people among their service users.

According to our commissioned reports on Census 2001, the proportions of male populations in Prison Service Establishments for White Irish population, White British population, and Whole Population, for England and Wales are as follows[1]:

England

Wales

In 1996 FIS in partnership with the Action Group for Irish Youth, The Bourne Trust, the Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas and the National Association of Probation Officers gathered some then existing information concerning the Irish community in Britain and the criminal justice system, along with 56 case studies contributed by Irish agencies. A publication, based on this information, followed in February 1997: The Irish Community: Discrimination and The Criminal Justice System, a copy of which is attached with this submission.

The recommendations of the above publication included the following:

• The Irish should be included as a distinct ethnic minority and monitored as a separate category in all equal opportunity programmes...The category of Irish should be based on self-definition...
• The Home Office should sponsor academic research directed at looking at the ways in which anti-Irish discrimination is expressed throughout the criminal justice system.
• The specific experience of Irish Travellers of the criminal justice system should be monitored and documented...
• The Home Office should encourage anti-discriminatory practice in the criminal justice system to include an Irish dimension.
• The Police, Probation and Prison services should implement ethnic monitoring which includes an Irish dimension and publish and act upon the outcomes.

The report itself was based on limited data which mirrored, and mirrors, the lack of attention to issues concerning vulnerable sections of the Irish community, which amounts in FIS's opinion to a specific British form of institutional racism.

We recognise that some progress has taken place since our report was published, which will benefit Irish people as well as others involved with the criminal justice system. The removal of prisoners' health care from the Prison Service in 2003 was a welcome event; and FIS is pleased that FIS was able, through our then Health Development Worker, to develop links between a number of our affiliates - including ITM and ICPO - and those developing prisoners' health care services in this new situation. We also recognise the progress which has been made via initiatives of the Crown Prosecution Service.

Many other aspects remain to be addressed.

However, to address the immediate subject of this consultation directly, FIS's comments will be brief and will focus on one specific and fundamental aspect.

We have looked at the presentation of the data in the tables, focusing on the presentation of the ethnic data.

The methodology here is quite unacceptable to FIS.

We note that you make passing reference to the broader ethnic categories of the 2001 Census - including the three White categories (one of which was the newly-introduced Irish category). However, there the matter ends - at least with regard to the Irish category, which was introduced in the Ethnic Question by ONS on the basis of the established need for Irish data to inform policy.

From that point on in the publications under consideration, various 'combined' categories are used - to use ONS terminology - in addition to some 'single' categories.

However, nowhere is any Irish data provided either as 'White Irish' or 'Nationality' data, and the 'Irish' data seems to be merged - and rendered invisible - in the 'White' data.

FIS would prefer Irish data as ethnic rather than nationality data, as this would make comparison with other BAME data easier. Equally, the marginalisation of the Irish Travellers and their relationship to the criminal justice system, as a recognisable Irish and nomadic group, merits specific attention.

The chief purpose of this response is, therefore, to stress the necessity of the collection and inclusion of Irish data, in a comparative form with that of other BAMEs, in the data under discussion.

Seán Hutton

Policy Officer

Federation of Irish Societies

shutton@irishsocieties.org

[1] Gudrun Limbrick, England:The Irish Dimension - An exploration of 2001 Census Data (FIS 2007), p. 49; Gudrun Limbrick, Wales:The Irish Dimension - An exploration of 2001 Census Data (FIS 2007), p. 39.