ANALYSIS:THE IRISH Prison Service's treatment of people sent to jail because they did not pay a fine imposed by the courts sends out a clear message to would-be defaulters – don't pay the fine because you most likely won't go to prison anyway.
What prison insiders and justice officials call a “front-door mechanism” was created last year. The system ensures that most fine defaulters arriving at the gates of a jail are turned away because there is no room for them inside.
Their fines are expunged on the spot because they are technically regarded as having served a short prison term in lieu of their fine.
Because they are turned away before being processed into the prison system, they are not classified as being on temporary release.
The mechanism has the effect of artificially reducing the number of prisoners on temporary release; a figure that when climbing always attracts negative attention for the government of the day.
News of the mechanism, once described as "fiddling the figures" by Minister for Justice Alan Shatter when he was in opposition, first emerged in The Irish Timeslast year.
While referred to as temporary release, most temporary releases are early releases. They involve prisoners being set free from jail early – or in the case of fine defaulters, before their sentences have even begun – with no obligation on them to return to prison. Last summer, when overcrowding in the prison system was reaching one of its increasingly frequent spikes, a circular was sent from then minister for justice Dermot Ahern to all of the prison governors.
It set out that jailed fine- defaulters should be freed on arrival at jail and not included in the temporary release figures.
The temporary release figures were just about to reach 1,000, a significant figure in the context of an overall prison population of just under 4,500.
When the memo was sent out, a greater number of fine defaulters were freed on arrival. These were then no longer included in the temporary release figures.
Immediately the numbers on temporary release plummeted from 938 to 651. Hundreds of those who should have been in prison, or at least included in the temporary release figures, had simply vanished from the list.
The Thornton Hall Review Group last month referred to the continued use of the “front-door mechanism”.
