The Labour Party has welcomed the publication of the Law Reform Commission's Report on Penalties for Minor Offences, which recommends shorter prison sentence and higher fines.
In today's report, it emerged that Ireland has one of the lowest reported crime rates in Europe, yet it sends more people to prison every year than most other European countries.
The explanation, the report says, is the practice in Ireland of early release and the heavy use of short sentences. In 1997, over 70 per cent of all Irish sentences were for less than one year and over 50 per cent were for under six months.
Mr Joe Costello, the Labour Party's spokesman on Justice, described the Report's recommendations as "progressive and showing a determination to come to grips with the incongruous pattern of traditional sentencing . . .
"The Commission recommends a shorter prison sentence and a higher level of fine, particularly for corporate crime," Mr Costello said.
"Clearly 12 months imprisonment is far more severe than a EU3000 fine. Moreover, it costs the State approximately EU80,000 to house a prisoner in an Irish prison for one year.
"A fixed maximum of EU3000 is unsatisfactory because it does not relate to the ability to pay of the individual or the corporate offender."
The Commission also recommends that the law should be adjusted to state explicitly that higher fines may be imposed if an offender is well-off. This, it says, should be so whether the offender is a person or a company.
As far as the District Court jurisdiction to imprison is concerned, the Commission provisionally proposes that there should be a clear statutory headline to the effect that the Court may impose a prison sentence up to a maximum of only six months, for minor offences
"It is now essential that the Law Reform Commission focus its attention on expanding the range of sanctions available for the sentencing judge to include a wide range of alternatives to custodial sentencing," Mr Costello added.
"These should include community service orders, restitution, weekend, night, or week-long orders, supervision orders, or a combination of such sanctions.
"These would be much more appropriate as sanctions for minor offences and would be more beneficial to the individual and would also save the tax-payer millions of Euro per annum."