Analysis:The Government's prison expansion plans are at odds with best practice, writes Conor Lally
The most considered argument yet against the State's prison expansion programme is contained in a new report on Ireland's alternatives to custodial sanctions, or rather the lack of them.
The author of the report, Seán Lowry, is the former head of the Probation and Welfare Service. He is perhaps better placed than anyone to run the rule over Ireland's approach.
In his review of practices in 30 countries he finds many progressive practices put in place by governments and policy-makers with a refreshing ability to think outside the box.
It makes our default position of dealing with crime by simply building more prison spaces seem simplistic.
There are currently around 3,500 places in the Irish prison system with plans to increase that by more than 1,000 in the short to medium term.
Mr Lowry's review found a more considered approach overseas. In some jurisdictions the emphasis on non-custodial sentences is so developed that prison sentences under eight months have been abolished.
If a similar approach on the abolition of short sentences was developed here the need for prison spaces for sentenced inmates would fall by around 60 per cent. It would mean some prisons could be closed rather than expanded. (In Ireland, 4,000 of 5,800 inmates serving sentences in 2006 had been imprisoned for eight months or less.)
In Norway, for example, the corrections service has the power to convert sentences of eight months or less to a period of community service and electronic tagging.
In some cases a prisoner's reason for offending is identified and part of the punishment on conviction is counselling that aims to address that root cause.
Courts can punish an offender with a "composite" order that involves combinations of community work, counselling, addiction treatment, tagging and imprisonment on default.
It currently costs up to €247,000 to keep one inmate in jail for a year, at a time of chronic under-investment in the probation service.
Other services that could help address recidivism, such as residential detoxification facilities and treatment programmes for sex offenders, exist in little more than token form.
There are just eight residential detoxification beds available for 8,000 registered heroin users. While there are 300 sex offenders in prison in the Republic there is only one sex-offender treatment programme, in Dublin's Arbour Hill Prison. It accommodates eight prisoners. Drug courts and restorative justice programmes have not been developed here in any meaningful way.
It is a combination of all of these approaches that forms the backbone of the Scandinavian "composite order" approach.
In his report Mr Lowry identifies the supervision of sex offenders in the community as an area for "possible development" in Ireland.
In Canada the concept of a "dangerous offenders" is in place, 90 per cent of whom are sex offenders. Once categorised as a dangerous offender, criminals receive indeterminate sentences. In 2001 of the 280 dangerous offenders in Canada, 90 per cent were in prison with the remaining 10 per cent living supervised in the community.
In Ireland around 150 released sex offenders are monitored by the Probation and Welfare Service. There are currently around 1,000 people on the sex offenders register here. While these must notify gardaí of their place of residence and of any plans to leave the State, the Garda has no role in monitoring their activities.