6th January 2025
On 6 January 2025, Sophie Carlin and Brian Mahon of the Irish Daily Mail wrote an article titled More Community Service and less jail to cut costs. Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) Executive Director Saoirse Brady discussed the overcrowded conditions in prisons in Ireland and alternatives to imprisoning people on short sentences.
She told the Irish Daily Mail that it costs the taxpayer over €85,000 to put someone in prison for a year, but a probation order, or supervision in the community, costs less than 10% of that.
She argued that as well as cutting costs, the approach would help tackle prison overcrowding, at a time when there are almost 500 more people in prison than there is space for, with around 300 of those sleeping on mattresses or floors.
Instead, she suggested investing the millions that would go into building such a prison into community services that would support people and divert them from the criminal justice system before that building is ever needed.
Images: Front page and page four of Irish Daily Mail article on 6 January 2025.
Read the full article on Press Reader or see the copy below:
SHORTER jail sentences and more community service should be introduced in a ‘no-brainer’ for the next government, the head of the Irish Penal Reform Trust has said.
Chief Saoirse Brady told the Irish Daily Mail the taxpayer forks out nearly €85,000 to put someone in prison for a year, but a probation order, or supervision in the community, costs less than 10% of that.
She argues that as well as cutting costs, the approach would help tackle prison overcrowding, at a time when there are almost 500 more inmates behind bars than there is space for, with around 300 of those sleeping on mattresses or floors.
However, politicians have pushed back against the idea, arguing that there must
be strong deterrents against crime. Fine Gael TD Micheál Carrigy said: ‘Justice has to be served for those that are law-abiding citizens. They want to see tough sentences out in place to make sure there is a deterrent for those who do commit crimes.’
He cautioned that a softer approach could see crime rates increase.
In 2023, some 1,614 people on community service did over €2million worth of unpaid work in lieu of 778 years in prison.
Ms Brady said: ‘It is still a sentence. It’s not a soft option. They still have a criminal record which will follow them usually for a significant period of time, sometimes for the rest of their lives, affecting them accessing things like employment and accommodation.’
She said outgoing Justice Minister Helen McEntee’s idea of a 2,200-bed ‘super-prison’ is not the answer and would buck the trend around Europe. She added: ‘The focus is all on small-scale detention. We’re going completely against that. You can clearly see big institutions don’t work to rehabilitate and support people within them.
‘What does that do for the almost 300 people currently sleeping on the floor of a prison cell? It does nothing to alleviate that.
‘Invest the millions that would go into building such a prison into community services that would support people and divert them from the criminal justice system before that building is ever needed.’
Figures released by the Department of Justice last year showed that the prison population stood at 5,015. But with bed capacity at 4,514, prisons were 111% overcrowded.
Three-quarters of people sent to prison are sentenced to 12 months or less, the latest prison report showed.
If they served time in the community instead, an enormous number of people would be removed from prisons – freeing up money and space in the system, Ms Brady said. She explained that sentences of 12 months or less tend to be handed out for less serious or non-violent offences such as road traffic offences, less serious public order offences (related to behaviour in a public place, like drunkenness) or small drugs possession offences.
Ms Brady added: ‘They could do community service for Tidy Towns, an animal rescue or community gardens, for instance, maybe painting, decorating, cleaning or doing admin according to their skill set.’
It brings value to local areas too, she said, and ‘links them back in with the community’ in a way prison often fails to achieve.
Ms Brady said short jail sentences ‘can do more harm than good’, and in addition, many leaving prison are often without a home or supports.
She added: ‘We know many people going to prison on short sentences have a mental health problem and/or an addiction. That is not to excuse somebody having offended but does point to some underlying reasons why that might have happened in the first place.’ Ms Brady also said ‘statistics around recidivism’ show ‘people who go to prison are more likely to reoffend than those who do not’, meaning community service ‘results in safer communities’.
Another alternative to prison, she said, is the diversion system at Cloverhill Prison in Dublin, which assesses if a given person in custody could be transferred out of prison to a medical facility or the community, with outpatient support.
This service, Ms Brady explained, has diverted at least two prisons’ worth of people from behind bars.
Another option is restorative justice, a mediated conversation between a victim and the offender.
However, the proposals were opposed by Mr Carrigy, the newly elected Fine Gael TD for Longford-Westmeath, who said the public wants to see criminals brought to justice.
He told the Mail: ‘If you do the crime, you have to do the time, in my view. There have to be sanctions there for people that commit crimes. There has to be a deterrent there for people who commit crimes. There has to be a strong deterrent.
‘If there is too soft an approach, I think that crime will increase.’
Mr Carrigy, who himself has been a victim of crime, said there were people in the courts with 40 or 50 offences. He added: ‘That’s taking up the resources of the gardaí and the court services and is a significant cost to the State.
‘I think the whole area of legal aid needs to be looked at.
‘There has to be a maximum amount of time that people are entitled to it. There is a revolving door with people in the courtrooms.’
Respect for rights in the penal system with prison as a last resort.