MORE THAN 3,000 people were jailed in the first 10 months of this year, for non-payment of fines, a 56 per cent increase on the figure for all of last year.
According to Department of Justice figures, 3,366 people were imprisoned this year to the end of October for defaulting on fines, while 2,154 were jailed during all of 2008.
The statistics however showed a reduction in the number of people jailed for non-payment of civil debts.
In 2008, 276 people were imprisoned for non-payment of civil debts compared to 157 for the first 10 months of this year.
Fine Gael justice spokesman Charlie Flanagan said that the 56 per cent increase in imprisonment for defaulting on fines was “despite the high cost of keeping a person in jail, serious over-crowding problems in prisons and evidence that community service programmes save the taxpayer huge amounts of money”.
Fine Gael believed that “an attachment of earnings order is a far more practical and cost-effective solution than a prison sentence as it allows money to be incrementally deducted from salaries or social welfare. It also means that money is coming back into State coffers rather than being spent on locking up minor offenders.”
Mr Flanagan received the figures in a written reply to a parliamentary question from Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern.
Mr Flanagan claimed the Minister was “presiding over a system that packs our prisons full of minor offenders despite national and international experts reporting that Irish jails are dangerously overcrowded and rife with drugs”.
The Fine Gael spokesman pointed to a Department of Justice report which showed that community service orders were a very cost-effective option and almost seven times less expensive than prisons.
“At a time when more and more people are losing their jobs and struggling to make ends meet financially,” Mr Flanagan added, “it is preposterous to be jailing those unable to pay debts and fines.”
