AN independent prisons agency run by a board consisting of people with expertise in penal work and senior managers from the private sector should be in place within the next two years.
Work is under way to set up the structures and legislation required to establish the Prisons Agency and management board, which was announced by the Government last year.
The Department of Justice yesterday published a report outlining details of the proposed agency, which was first recommended 12 years ago by the Whitaker committee on the penal system.
The Minister for Justice Mrs Owen, yesterday welcomed the report, Towards an Independent Prisons Agency, describing it as a "reflection of modern thinking and developments in relation to public service management - an issue on which this Government has been undertaking fundamental reforms".
The report proposes transferring control and management of the prison system from the Department of Justice, which has a prison section with just over 50 staff, to the new agency.
The role of the agency, which could be in place by 1999, is to "provide and operate, within budget and policy guidelines laid down by the Minister for Justice, an efficient, effective and humane prison system".
The Minister will retain overall responsibility for prisons but, aside from major policy driven decisions, it is proposed that the agency will have a major degree of independence in running the prisons.
It will have a director general and deputy and a board consisting of prisons experts and senior figures from the private sector. According to senior sources, the agency will be staffed by civil servants but will not be an arm of the Department of Justice.
The report published yesterday reveals that there has been a 50 per cent increase in the number of people committed to prison since 1990. An average of 10,000 people are sentenced to imprisonment each year. The system has the capacity for only 2,300, although this is being increased by some 800 places.
Despite the upsurge in the number of people sentenced for violent and other crimes, the Republic still has the lowest level of imprisonment in Europe, with only 60 persons per 100,000 of the population. Some countries have prison populations many times higher than in Ireland. In the United States almost 600 per 100,000 of the population are in jail.
A third of Irish prisoners are under 21, and more than half are serving a sentence of more than two years. About 60 per cent are serving sentences for violent crime.
It costs £890 a week to keep a prisoner in custody. There are 2,470 prison officers, producing one of the highest prisoner to prison officer ratios in the world.
The role of the agency will be to maintain good order and control throughout the prison system and to treat those in custody with "care, dignity and respect and ensure that they have access to facilities and services for the promotion of their physical, mental and moral well being to actively encourage the rehabilitation of prisoners and to prepare them for release back into the community".