That's another fine mess we're in

Why do we send so many people to prison for not paying fines? There are better ways to deal with the problem, according to the experts. Eddie Lennon reports

John Lonergan, the governor of Mountjoy Prison, has seen many people imprisoned for minor offences. What he describes as the most stupid case was when a Co Mayo farmer was fined £5 (€6.35) for having no tail light on his tractor trailer, with two days in jail the alternative. "He wouldn't pay the fine, so the State brought him from Mayo, paid for a taxi and two gardaí, lodged him in Mountjoy, and we released him the next morning and paid his train fare home. The whole process probably cost about £2,000 \."

Many people are jailed not because they refuse to pay, however, but because they are unable to pay. When a court decides that a person has broken the law, the penalty is a fine or imprisonment. It can order that, if the fine remains unpaid after, say, 14 days, the person goes to jail. When the sentence has been served the State cancels the fine. (In the case of a civil debt, imprisonment for non-payment does not wipe out the debt to the creditor, as the matter is between two private parties.)

In 2002, of the almost 125,000 defendants convicted in the District Court, 110,192 were fined, compared with 111,817 of some 127,000 in 2001 and 129,430 of some 146,000 in 2000. There is now a consensus across the criminal-justice system that justice is not being served by our systematic imprisonment of people who pose little or no threat to society.

Although there are no figures for the number of people imprisoned for defaulting on fines, the most recent statistics from the Irish Prison Service show that, of the 5,036 people committed to prison in 2002, 1,909, or 38 per cent, were sentenced to less than three months - "the vast majority of people in prison for short periods are those in default of fines," says Lonergan. Although the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Michael McDowell, said in 2002 that people imprisoned for non-payment constituted no more than 1.5 per cent of the prison population, they are actually jailed far more than the figures suggest.

Although Ireland's jail population is relatively low - 78 prisoners per 100,000 people, compared with the European average of 141 per 100,000 - we imprison a comparatively high number of people each year: 313 per 100,000 people, compared with the European average of 288 per 100,000. Ireland's high turnover of short-sentence prisoners includes, as Lonergan points out, a disproportionately high number of fine defaulters.

"Prison should be the absolute last resort," he says. "It should only be used for people whose behaviour is a risk to society. I have seen people imprisoned for six to nine months because of their social and personal circumstances, for the most minor offences. One in four prisoners suffers from mental-health problems and 70 per cent have a history of chronic addiction. "I came across a woman in her late teens who had failed to pay the correct bus fare. She was fined £75 \, was unable to pay it and was imprisoned for 14 days. Surely there should be an alternative way of penalising that person."

It costs more than €80,000 a year to keep a person in prison. And as the remission principle, whereby prisoners serve 75 per cent of their sentences, applies only to people jailed for more than a month, most fine defaulters serve their full sentences. So the State is spending a considerable sum imprisoning people for relatively trivial offences.

"There should be other ways of getting back the value of the fine from people rather than jailing them," suggests Lonergan. "We hear a lot about the concept of restorative justice. But no one would convince me that people who don't pay fines should be imprisoned. Remember that, in such a case, when the court makes its decision it says that it feels the offence does not warrant imprisonment. Surely there must be more innovative ways of penalising them appropriately, such as via community service, rather than sending them to prison? After all, the crime itself is not very serious."

Dr Ian O'Donnell, deputy director of the Institute of Criminology at University College Dublin, has written extensively about sentencing. He agrees with Lonergan. "The pattern in Ireland has been one of short sentences. We are incarcerating lots of people for very short periods. They clearly do not present a major threat; if they did they would be getting longer sentences."

He adds: "Given that their sentences are so short, what do we do with them when they are inside? Take someone sentenced for nine weeks. What can you do with someone in that time? You need a certain period to stabilise a prisoner, particularly someone with a drug or alcohol problem. With short sentences there just isn't enough time to do that."

Dr O'Donnell notes that if someone is arrested for begging, the court can impose a fine or a prison sentence. But even then imprisonment is inevitably the outcome. "If the fine is imposed the person will go to prison in default anyway, because they will beg again to try to get the money."

Four years ago a subcommittee report of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights pointed out that the jailing of fine defaulters raises some difficult issues. "First of all, these are individuals whose original offences were not serious enough to merit custody but who went to prison anyway due to their inability or unwillingness to pay. Second, such a sanction impacts most severely on those without means, giving the impression that justice discriminates against the poor.

"Third, the imprisonment of large numbers of fine defaulters, albeit for short periods, exacerbates the already chronic overcrowding at the committal prisons, especially Mountjoy. Fourth, the imposition of a prison term means the fine goes uncollected. Not only is revenue lost in this way, but there are significant costs associated with incarceration." The subcommittee concluded that jailing defaulters "is neither in the interests of justice nor of sound financial management".

In August 2002 McDowell published a study entitled Imprisonment For Fine Default And Civil Debt. It found that most of those jailed for fine default are male and close to the poverty line; two-thirds are committed for not paying fines for traffic or motoring offences, usually in respect of one single offence; almost as many are unemployed or not in the labour force because of disability, with a significant number living in poverty and experiencing other difficulties, who tend not to have the capacity to pay the fines, especially if they are to be paid in full or if there has been an accumulation of fines; and about half of those imprisoned for fine default or civil debt are sentenced to less than 10 days, with 75 per cent of these freed within five days. It also found that non-payment of fines relates primarily to changes in employment circumstances and that the lack of an option to pay by instalment is also an obstacle.

According to the Department of Justice, the Minister is reviewing the way fines are dealt with and expects to bring a Fines Bill to government "shortly". The Bill "will include proposals to strengthen the criteria to be used by the courts in assessing the means of offenders before imposing fines and provisions for the payment of fines by instalments". Alternative ways of enforcing fines "are being considered in the context of the proposed Enforcement of Fines Bill, which will supplement initiatives contained in the Fines Bill".

The Department says that, as the work is at a preliminary stage, it is not possible yet to indicate what measures will be included. However, "the purpose of the proposed [Enforcement of Fines\] Bill is to end, as far as practicable, imprisonment for non-payment of fines and provide for new ways to enforce fines." Many observers will hope that the legislation, whenever it comes into force, will usher in a new, more enlightened policy to deal with many relatively trivial offences.