THE Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell, has criticised overcrowding in prisons and said the system "gratuitously" increases the severity of court sentences.
Dr Connell referred to the importance of the issue in an "election year". He pointed to the responsibilities of the Minister for Justice, Ms Owen, in the area, but added that politicians sometimes act only according to their perception of what the public would accept.
He said the Government's latest prison building programme had so far added only a "small number" of extra spaces. He also expressed doubts as to whether prison terms accurately reflected the justice supposed to be dispensed by the courts.
Dr Connell was speaking at a seminar in Dublin for 22 prison chaplains, which was sponsored by the Department of Justice.
The problem of coping with crime has come to the top of our political agenda at an important moment - election year," the archbishop said.
In the early 1980s the average daily number of prisoners in the State was 993, he said, but that had now risen to 2,200. The number serving life sentences had grown from 12 in 1982 to 83 in 1993.
"To each conviction corresponds a victim of crime and a wave of fear affecting family members and neighbours of victims. The first responsibility of the public authority must be the protection of the public from crime.
However, he added, prisoners "must indeed pay their debt to society but must not be rejected as outcasts."
Dr Connell said there was "huge overcrowding" in the prison system and that recent work at the Curragh and Castlerea prisons added only a "small number" of extra spaces.
He said prisoners saw overcrowded prisons as "places of fear and violence".
"Difficulties created by overcrowding gratuitously increase the severity of the sentence imposed by the courts," he said. "One wonders, in fact, whether this aggravation can be reconciled with the justice envisaged by the sentence imposed.
Dr Connell said that while efforts were being made to improve the "particularly bad" conditions for women prisoners, they would take at least two years to have an effect.
He added that overcrowding affected the mood of prisoners and the work of prison staff. "Great credit is due to prison staff who perform their duties so responsibly and well."
It was "easy to find fault with the Minister for Justice, who bears the responsibility for prison conditions," he continued. "But what the Minister can achieve is dependent on the urgency with which the problem requiring attention is perceived by the public."
Quoting from one of his own pastoral letters, he said politicians are sometimes criticised for failing to tackle our problems when the fault may lie more in our own unwillingness to support them it they devise appropriate policies that call for sacrifice from us."
Dr Connell's remarks follow a week of controversy over the Mountjoy prison siege, which ended on Monday of last week.
The governor, Mr John Lonergan, has said the siege was not related to prison conditions and that he believed the prisoners involved, who held four officers hostage for more than two days, were attempting to escape.
The spokesman for the Prison Officers' Association, Mr Tom Hoare, has said there should be no attempt to diminish the seriousness of the episode.
A spokesman for the archbishop said Dr Connell was a "regular" visitor to prisons, and while he had been in none so far this year he had visited Arbour Hill at the end of last year.
He said the archbishop would "normally come into prisons at the invitation of the prison chaplain, say Mass and meet the prisoners.
He added that Dr Connell would frequently discuss the topic with other bishops including Dr Eamonn Walsh, auxiliary bishop with responsibility for prison chaplaincy.