This blog post is the final of a three part series on policy-making as storytelling. In this week’s piece, Keith Adams considers how to make further sense of the stories around homelessness by looking at the sources of the housing which families enter into as they exit homelessness and how we can end homelessness.

In the second of our three-part series on Policy-making as Storytelling, Keith Adams continues to analyse the Quarterly Homeless Progress Reports to see who remains in emergency accommodation, and for how long? In next week’s final piece, we will look at how we can prevent homelessness.

This blog post is the first of a three part series by the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice on policy-making as storytelling. Using the Quarterly Homeless Progress Reports, this series will consider the stories which are central to homeless policy in Ireland and if other stories exist. This post will focus on exits from homelessness with the second post next week reflecting on families prevented from entering homelessness. Duration of stay in emergency accommodation will be the focus of the third blog post and round off the series.

  In early 1998, Tony Blair, then UK Prime Minister, addressed the French National Assembly. In fluent French, he described the political ethos shaping New Labour and, more broadly, Third Way politics, as “an attempt to make realistic sense of the modern world. It is a world in which love of ideals is essential but… Read more »

It is important to ask why a request to vaccinate prisoners in the early stages of the programme is met with vehemence and opposition. The force of emotion expressed reflects something of our punitive instinct around justice and this particular instance exposes how in the end, that desire is self-destructive.

Keith Adams considers, from a sociological and theological perspective, what it means for the terminally-ill to die in prison.

Imagine if death was somehow suspended, causing people who are close to their demise or severely injured to exist, in a catatonic state? Portuguese author, Jose Saramago posits this scenario in his novel Death with Interruptions. He considers it as a thought experiment, teasing out its potential political, economic, and social ramifications, often with surprising… Read more »

At the end of July, we witnessed a surge in the number of deaths of people who were homeless or in emergency accommodation. Almost daily reports made the loss of life seem endless. In Dublin alone, ten deaths occurred in July – six men and four women – bringing the capital’s total for 2020 so… Read more »

  We have never been so obsessed with experiments. In some sense, our former way of life ostensibly hinges on their success. Reports of the merest success against Covid-19 imbue us with hope. On the periphery of the pandemic, slightly more removed, many unintended social experiments have occurred or are ongoing in Ireland. Typically, social… Read more »

A common lament of those working in the area of prison policy is a lack of information. This has not been one of those weeks. Since the beginning of the week, a number of documents with either a full or partial focus on prisons – the Irish Prison Service Annual Report 2019, a draft Programme… Read more »