Calls have been made for more alternatives to prison as a pathway out of crime as a Limerick-based project run by the probation service continues to offer a "second chance" to former offenders.
The Palls (Probation and Linkage Limerick) education and training centre caters for men and women over the age of 23 and supported over 400 clients last year.
Their workshop on Limerick's Dock Road doubles as a wood-manufacturing and training facility, where service users are assisted with upskilling and improving their employability.
There is also a "robust case management system", according to Palls General Manager Michael Guerin, where participants are helped with "other issues that may have contributed to their involvement in crime" such as substance misuse, homelessness or coming from a disadvantaged area.
For all of those people referred to Palls by the Probation Service, he added, there is an understanding that they are "coming here with a view to moving away from the life they had when they were engaged in crime".
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For Gary, who is in his 40s and grew up in the St Mary’s Park area of Limerick city, coming to Palls gave him a second chance after he received a four year suspended sentence for trying "to hold up" an off licence, demanding money from a counter assistant with a knife.
It was "a stupid thing" to do, he told RTÉ’s Drivetime.
"I felt disgraced afterwards" and "couldn’t remember it" as he was "drink and drug fuelled" at the time, while also dealing with an ongoing gambling problem.
Gary completed a number of custodial sentences in the past for other crimes, when he was "young and didn’t think" about it, when the "drugs weren’t as heavy, you had a bit of hash and a few tablets in prison" but the situation is very different now, he believes, adding that he would "be afraid" of his life to go to prison, "that’s why I turned my life around for the better".
Now working on wood manufacturing, furniture and upholstery projects as well as mentoring other young offenders who come to the Palls Warehouse, Gary says that coming to work in the morning is a "dream come true" and you can see it in "all the lads" many of whom have "gone on to jobs successfully".
Palls provides "occupational therapy", according to Margaret Griffin, the Regional Manager of the Probation Service in the South West, with "somewhere to go" every day which is "a huge thing for someone who isn’t in employment or gainfully occupied".
Rejecting the "idea of probation being a soft option" compared to prison as "erroneous", Ms Griffin, who oversees the Probation Service in Counties, Limerick, Clare, Cork and Kerry, said "we’re asking people to change huge aspects of their lives like their relationship with drink and drugs, their peer group".
Prison may not be the place for them, she said, so "we need to create opportunities for them and hope of something they can aspire to, that their lives will be better when they have moved away from offending".
Some have gone on to jobs, others to further education, she said, pointing to the "need to create more of these pathways for them".
The Palls Initiative was founded in 2009 at a time of few opportunities in Limerick City, according to local businessman Raymie O’Halloran who is a community representative on its board of Directors.
We were "in the middle of a feud" he said, when people from "Southill wouldn’t go to Moyross for a job" and vice versa, communities were divided and "desperate" he said, explaining that its Dockland’s site in the city was picked as a "neutral territory".
Hailing the success of the Project, Mr O’Halloran observed "there’s guys from all the different areas" here who talk to one another again, without division. "I’m not saying it’s completely fixed" he added, "but it’s definitely on the way".
Acknowledging the work done by Limerick’s Regeneration Agencies in the city’s unemployment blackspots, Mr O’Halloran said his Speedline Engineering Company, which employs 54 people is now "the only industry in Moyross" as he called on other businesses to connect with initiatives like Palls where everyone he has met "wants to work" and more industry could provide solutions to ongoing social problems.
He added that while some employers may be reluctant to hire people who have been involved in the criminal activity or through the probation service, Limerick people are "renowned for helping" others and "if we don’t include people in our economy, they’re going to make their own".
