There are grounds for believing the level of imprisonment could be reduced without jeopardising public safety, writes Ian O'Donnell.
One issue has been conspicuously absent from the controversy surrounding the proposed new prison for Dublin. This is whether there is any evidence that it is actually necessary.
Given the enormous social and economic costs involved, there must be unambiguous and overwhelming arguments in favour of any expansion of a country's prison system.
There can be no disputing the fact that the number of men, women and children in Irish jails has risen markedly over the past 10 years (in round terms from 2,100 in 1994 to 3,200 in 2004). However, this trend requires careful interpretation. It does not simply reflect an increase in the number of people sentenced to terms of imprisonment.
In the early 1990s many sentenced prisoners were granted temporary release and, as such, were excluded from official counts of the prison population.
When they are taken into account the increase in the number of prisoners is less dramatic than it first appears.
More recently there has been a sharp growth in the number of individuals denied bail and remanded in custody until they can be dealt with by the courts. Prisons have also become places where people are detained for immigration-related reasons. There are strong arguments that these two groups should be kept apart from convicted criminals. At the very least they should be enumerated separately. When this is done, the gap between the number of sentenced prisoners today and a decade ago narrows further (2,600 in 1994 and 2,900 in 2004).
The final refinement is to take account of demographic changes and express the number of sentenced prisoners per 100,000 population. When this is done, last year's rate of 71 is virtually identical to the rate in 1994, which stood at 72.
This is a startling finding. It demonstrates that the pressure to expand does not appear to be coming from within the criminal justice system.
There is a further cause for concern. In 1994 recorded crime was heading for a peak and the prisons were crowded. However, Department of Justice policy was to strive for an upper limit of between 2,200 and 2,300 on the number of offenders in custody.
Today, there is talk of designing a system for over 4,000. In the absence of detailed cost-benefit analyses, this apparent enthusiasm to incarcerate is difficult to understand. Part of the explanation is that restraint in earlier years was motivated by an acute awareness of the financial implications of penal planning.
These are substantial: to keep a dozen men in custody costs €1 million each year. It is likely that a more buoyant economy has diminished the significance of such considerations.
The level of imprisonment in Ireland is low by international standards. Rather than planning for expansion, there are grounds for believing that it could be reduced without jeopardising public safety.
A number of strategies could be employed. These include punishing more offenders in the community; increasing the standard rate of remission; widening parole eligibility; introducing waiting lists or weekend and evening imprisonment for offenders who do not pose a threat; and granting periodic amnesties.
Such a refocusing of effort would fit neatly within the Council of Europe's recommendation on "prison population inflation".
This is based on four interrelated propositions.
1. The deprivation of liberty should be regarded as a sanction of last resort and provided for only where the seriousness of the offence would make any other response clearly inadequate.
2. The extension of the prison estate should be an exceptional measure. Countries whose prison capacity may be sufficient in overall terms but poorly adapted to local needs should try to achieve a more rational distribution of this expensive resource.
3. Provision should be made for an appropriate array of community sanctions and measures, possibly graded in terms of relative severity, and judges should be prompted to use them as widely as possible.
4. To devise a coherent strategy against prison population inflation, a detailed analysis of the main contributing factors should be carried out, addressing, in particular, such matters as the types of offence which carry long prison sentences, priorities in crime control, public sentiment and existing sentencing practices.
If taken seriously, this recommendation would have implications for the scale of any prison-building programme. For example, it is obvious that estimating the demand for additional prison places will require a careful examination of the interaction between different elements of the justice system, in particular trends in crime, prosecutions and sentencing. At present, data limitations mean that this is not possible.
Furthermore, it will be difficult to anticipate the demand for prison accommodation, and in particular the size of the institutions required to take over from the cluster of facilities currently available on the Mountjoy site, until a full array of community-based options is in place and being utilised by the courts. Such a scenario is some way distant.
If my analysis is correct it raises an urgent question about the justification for any new prison on expansionist grounds.
No one would deny the need for humane conditions and to provide them will require a programme of modernisation. It is unacceptable that during long periods of lock-up some prisoners have no choice but to urinate and defecate into buckets.
However, the emphasis should be on replacing, rather than supplementing, the stock of cells.
It would be worthwhile considering the option that for every three new prison cells constructed, four old ones would be taken entirely out of commission. This is a low-risk approach, and if it proved demonstrably unsuccessful, it would be easy to revise.
In the meantime, the financial savings could be put to good use in our hospitals and schools.
Dr Ian O'Donnell is deputy director, UCD Institute of Criminology