Record numbers being sent to prison as fine defaulting soars

The numbers sent to prison in the Republic increased to a record level last year despite the continuing decline in the levels of reported crime.

A total of 17,420 prison committals were recorded in 2015, according to data obtained from the Irish Prison Service. The previous record was the total of 17,319 people recorded in 2011. The numbers fell to 15,735 in 2013, the most significant fall in two decades.

At the end of last year there were 3,647 people in prisons across the country. Some 3,147 were serving sentences, 486 were on remand awaiting trial or sentence and 304 were on temporary release.

Of those 3,147 prisoners serving sentences, the largest number, 612 people, were jailed for theft-related offences. There were 465 serving sentences for attempts or threats to murder and other assault-related offences.

Some 410 prisoners were serving homicide-related sentences, 387 were in prison for drugs offences; 355 for sexual offences, and there were 30 subversive prisoners in the Republic’s jails.

Of the 17,420 committals to prison last year, some 9,800 involved people jailed because they had failed to pay fines imposed by the courts on conviction for a variety of offences.

The vast majority of these defaulters are processed into the prisons and released after hours or the following morning. As the defaulters are non-violent offenders, who should only serve up to a week in jail, and due to issues with overcrowding in the prison system, a practice of immediate release on committal has emerged over the years.

New long-mooted legislation that was finally put into operation in January has already had what appears to be a significant impact on trends around the committal to prison of jail defaulters.

“The number of fine defaulters being processed is down by as much as 55 per cent in the last few weeks,” said one source monitoring the impact of the new Fines Act, a first version of which was enacted in 2010 but remained unused.

Poorest

The Irish Penal Reform Trust said it welcomed the Act finally coming into operation, saying many of those committed to prison because they could not pay fines were among the poorest. It added that women were over-represented in the group, accounting for one in four of fines committals despite fewer than 5 per cent of prisoners serving sentences being women.

The trust’s deputy director Fíona Ní Chinnéide cautioned that “a habit” had developed under which some people convicted in the courts did not pay fines knowing they would be cleared by spending just a few hours in jail.

She suggested that practice of “people going in and getting their fines wiped with just a few hours” may be clung to by some offenders.

Under the new legislation those sanctioned with fines can pay them in instalments over 12 months. An attachment to earnings mechanism can also be used to take instalment payments from people at source, though social welfare payments cannot be taken in the same way.

A spokesman for the Irish Prison Service said the prison population on any given day was in the region of 3,800 prisoners, in a system with a bed capacity of 4,166.

He believed if the numbers being committed to prison, even for very brief periods, was significantly reduced over time it would free up resources.