Community Based Health in Detention - A Model to Improve Health and Wellbeing for People Deprived of their Liberty

ICPA2023 Presentation by Caron McCaffrey, Graham Betts-Symonds, Carola Ruud and Jan-Erik Sandlie (ICPA2023-PID134)

Authors

Caron McCaffrey

Director General, Irish Prison Service, Ireland

Caron McCaffrey was appointed Director General of the Irish Prison Service on 13th December 2018. Caron is the first female Director General of the Irish Prison Service. Caron has served on the board of The European Organisation of Prison and Correctional Services (EuroPris) since 2019. Europris is open to those European national Prison and Correctional Administrations which are able and willing to support the agreed aims and objectives of the Association. Caron is the current President of Europris, having being elected in October 2021.
The Director General (DG) of the Irish Prison Service has responsibility for the leadership and management of the Service and the implementation of Government policies and strategies. The DG is accountable for providing strong leadership and direction in a complex and rapidly evolving pressurised environment with a team of more than 3,400 staff and a budget of approximately €414 million.
Caron McCaffrey has worked for twenty three years in the justice sector, first serving in the Department of Justice and Equality in Asylum Policy Division, the Press Office, and the Youth Justice Unit before taking up a role in the Irish Prison Service in 2006 as Press and Programme Manager. She was promoted to Director of Corporate Services in 2008 and has since held responsibility for a range of portfolios including Human Resources, and Finance and Estates.
She is a graduate of NUI Maynooth (BA) and Dublin City University (MA International Relations), holds an Advanced Diploma in Applied Employment Law from the Kings Inns, and recently graduated from the UCD Smurfit Business School with a Postgraduate Diploma in Corporate Governance.

Graham Betts-Symonds

Director, Community Based Health in Justice, Global Hub for Community Based Health in Detention, Irish Red Cross, Irish Prison Service, Ireland

Dr Graham Betts-Symonds has over thirty years’ experience in Public Health, Health in Detention, Disaster Preparedness and Risk Reduction. He also has Prisoner of War Facility management experience in combat zones. Graham was previously, Senior Officer with the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Geneva specialising in the Asia-Pacific, Middle East & North Africa Regions.
He developed the Action Learning approach of the Community Based Health & First Aid (CBHFA) Programme for the International Federation of the Red Cross published in Geneva in 2009, which is being used in wider communities globally in over 120 countries.
Graham adapted the Community Based Health programme for use in a Detention context in Ireland in 2009. The Irish Red Cross and Irish Prison Service were the first country globally to implement this where it has been successfully operating for fourteen years.
Following a number of international trainings and support to implement the programme in Australian and Norwegian Corrections Services and Red Cross Societies, a Global Hub for Community Based Health in Detention was established in Ireland from 2022 with IRC, ICRC and IFRC Geneva.
As part of the IRC Global Hub partnership, Ireland and Norway will support the national Red Cross Societies and Detention Services of Honduras and Columbia to implement pilot Community Based Health in Detention projects. Training will be provided at the Global Hub International Training Centre hosted by our IPS partner at the Irish Prison Service College in Ireland.

Carola Ruud

Senior Advisor, Norwegian Red Cross, Corrections Service Norway

Carola Becher Ruud is a criminologist from the University in Oslo, has worked with detainees and prisons both from the inside the Norwegian Correction Service and from the outside. Since 2017, she has been working for the Norwegian Red Cross as National Program Manager for the Justice Program. In this capacity she developed and launched the Community Based Health in Detention program in Norwegian prisons in 2020 and is now working with the Irish Red Cross to develop the Global Hub.

Jan-Erik Sandlie

Deputy Director General, Directorate of Norwegian Correctional Services, Norway

Jan-Erik Sandlie is Deputy Director General in the Directorate of Norwegian Correctional Service and second in command. The Directorate was established in 2013.
Mr. Sandlie has worked within the Correctional Service since his graduation as a lawyer in 1989. He has through his career held different positions in the Norwegian Ministry of Justice, Department of Correctional Service, ranging from Executive Officer and Adviser to Deputy Director General. He has also been project manager for some major and key developing projects in the Norwegian Correctional Service: the planning of Halden prison, the reduction of the waiting list (“prison queue”), implementing Electronic Monitoring and Implementation of the White paper “Punishment that works”. From 2001 – 2007 he was Deputy Regional Director in Correctional Service, Region East and in 2013 Regional Director of the same region. Mr. Sandlie is the co-author of several books about Norwegian Correctional Service.

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