Until people in socially-deprived areas experience real benefits from the educational system, the present two-tier system in society would continue, the governor of Mountjoy Prison, Mr John Lonergan, said yesterday.
Addressing 500 primary teachers at a Mary Immaculate College Centenary Summer School in Limerick, he asked the teachers to reflect on how this two-tier system worked.
"In some parts of our cities, all the necessary social and family infrastructure is in place - responsible and well-informed parents, modern housing, play schools, sporting and recreational facilities, high-quality schooling, grinds, the resources to facilitate access to third-level education.
"The end product is generally a well-adjusted adult with the necessary skills and qualifications which almost guarantee employment. Obviously, all the outlined social and educational infrastructure is regarded as essential in all our affluent areas. Children born into such areas have a lot going for them from birth.
"On the other hand, children born into our disadvantaged areas are subjected to the very opposite experiences - often poorly-educated, addicted and inadequate parents, bad housing, no community and social infrastructure, badly-maintained schools, drugs, crime and violence. The contrasts are huge, significant and worlds apart."
Referring to research carried out by Dr Paul O'Mahony from 1986 to 1996, he said Dr O'Mahony concluded that Mountjoy prisoners as a group had a profile of stark disadvantage, with the large majority of them living in rented accommodation in poor working-class areas of Dublin.
They came from very large families where a parent was usually employed as a non-skilled manual labourer or was chronically unemployed and had left school before 16, without any qualifications. They themselves were unemployed before imprisonment and were users of hard drugs. They had never married but had fathered children.
He said more than half of the group grew up in a home where either no parents worked or only the mother worked in a menial job. By general population standards, a remarkably large minority of the sample was illiterate; had lost parents in childhood through death or marital breakdown; had never held a job for more than three months; had hepatitis or were HIV positive; and had made a suicide attempt.
Mr Lonergan said nowadays the usual response to all of these facts was to instantly dismiss them as a "do-gooder" excuse for crime and delinquency. There were no excuses for crime. However, there was a need to identify the causes if real solutions were to be put forward. Education and educators had a fundamental and key role to play and there was no easy or short-term fix.
He said the days of working groups, studies and seminars were over and worthwhile action would cost money. "Failure to take action now will result in much long-term costs and repercussions. Don't tell me that we cannot afford it. We can afford to spend millions on roads, footpaths, cutting hedges and thistles, and all to facilitate a cycle race, the Tour de France."