I READ recently that more and more people are retreating permanently into solitude and meditation to escape the horrific and frightening things that are going on in this world. The simplicity and solitude of the cell is said to help strengthen and deepen the inner person.

Such isolation seems impossible in an age in which information technology has made it infinitely harder to escape the noise of a world at work and play. But for those making the choice, such impossibility has been transformed into reality. They spend a set time in prayer and contemplation and do some work to cover the cost of their food and clothing. Most importantly, however, they impose a voluntary limitation on their dealings with others.

Then there are those for whom a similar isolation is not of their choosing. Those who have not only broken the social rules of conduct but also the criminal law and who, in retribution, are deprived of their liberty. Indeed, prisons have been described as just that: buildings in which one group of human beings denies another group of human beings freedom.

So we put people into prisons as a punishment for their crimes. In another sense we hope that locking them away will also act as a deterrent to prevent or reduce similar occurrences. But past experience has shown that it does neither. Some 70 per cent of offenders commit crimes within two years of release. Our prisons, therefore, rather than being the rehabilitative institutions we believe them to be are being likened to schools of crime: young offenders will tell you quite openly that they learned all they know in prison.

In Mountjoy, one third of the prisoners are road traffic offenders and 90 per cent are serving sentences for minor offences. A minority of prisoners serving time are guilty of violent crime. Yet they are all housed under the one roof and all are subjected to the same conditions and regime. Are we not, therefore, simply shooting ourselves in the foot if our approach to custodial sentence is one which allows the petty thief to learn how to be the smarter criminal?

Of course, I acknowledge the fact that people have a basic right to a society in which they can live in peace and walk the streets without fear. I am not arguing against the need for imprisonment and detention. But we must take note of what holds our criminals in bondage to their crime.

Criminal offence is an activity largely associated with working class areas. Not because the greater volume of offences may have been committed there, but because the profile of people living in those areas better ties in with our photo fit notion of what constitutes criminal tendency. White collar crime rarely comes to light. To what extent, therefore, are we responsible for perpetuating the circumstance that turns a person to crime? We must change our own attitude to those living in poverty if we are to provide an equitable system of justice, and we must try to see beyond the en me to the person of the criminal if we are to provide a judicial system of reform and rehabilitation. Can punishment really inculcate an attitude of remorse if it does not form part of a holistic healing process? Even under the closest observation, prisoners kill themselves. As their custodial guardians, we are responsible. We must therefore ask why?

No one would doubt that life behind bars can be a brutalising experience. Many, perhaps those who have suffered as victims of crime, might hope that it is so. Crime does require action, but those entrusted by society to enforce such action must never allow their humanity to be second placed by duty. Victims have rights but so, too, do prisoners.

Now there are some who will say such words bespeak a "soft soap" approach; they are the ones who will argue for the traditional approach of the short and the sharp and the shocking. It is not surprising, then, that it has been said there is no such thing as a good prison, only some less bad. Yet if we don't try to change the system, how will we ever know?

There are prison services all over the world addressing that question right now. Some are learning a lot from the lessons of those people choosing isolation: just as people on the outside are turning these days in increasing numbers to meditation for silence and space, so many offenders on the inside are being offered the opportunity to combine their solitude with supervised meditation. It is a restorative programme that is having rehabilitative effect. In Britain, for example, where it has been introduced into more than 70 prisons, some of the more hardened criminals are starting to weigh the violence of their past against the value of their future.

Now many people will scoff at the notion of meditation forming part of a prison routine. But people who attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings recognise that drinkers have to acknowledge a power higher than themselves if they are to change. Those offering meditative processes to prisoners do so in the belief that all beings can open themselves to the sacred and become free, even in prison.

SOME people may still scof and decry the notion that criminality and spirituality are compatible. Some will still argue for measures of increased severity as part of our penal code. But there are those others with vision. Those who will work quietly for an alternative approach to traditional incarceration, who will understand the dire need for increased resources to be made available, be these physical, material, emotional or spiritual. These are the people who will question whether the training and working conditions of prison officers are satisfactory; who will wonder whether the media engage in selective and sensational reporting of crime; and who will worry about the effect political and economic trends will have on societies and their response to crime and the criminal.

The old order is fast breaking down. If you have ever had cause to visit one of our own prisons - Portlaoise, Arbour Hill, Mountjoy, Wheatfield, St Patrick's you will know what I mean. We have lost at least seven prisoners to suicide this year. There is a lesson to be learned: once a prisoner, maybe but always a human being.