MINISTER FOR Justice Alan Shatter has said the last government is to blame for the fact that 15 per cent of the prison population is free because there is nowhere to keep them in the overcrowded prison system.
New figures obtained by The Irish Timesreveal the prison population has now passed 5,000 inmates; 775 of whom are free because of a shortage of space while 4,275 are in jail.
In response to queries from The Irish Timesabout the increasing numbers of inmates now enjoying early release because the jails are full, Mr Shatter blamed the Fianna Fáil-Green coalition.
“Had earlier action been taken by the previous government to provide essential additional prison places, these would currently be housing prisoners on temporary release.”
He said construction was under way at two jails to provide additional spaces; 300 at the Midlands Prison in Portlaoise; and another 70 at the women’s Dóchas Centre in Dublin’s Mountjoy campus.
The overcrowding situation is becoming so acute that plans by the Government to formalise the early release of inmates are being expanded.
Mr Shatter had already revealed earlier this year that he was considering granting early release to inmates who had served the bulk of their sentences and posed no risk to the community.
He said they would trade the time remaining on their sentences for community service.
Mr Shatter told The Irish Timesthat a pilot programme to trial that idea was now being readied for roll-out by his officials.
He outlined how the plan to swap jail time for community service hours would now also be extended to inmates applying for parole.
“I intend to give new guidelines to the Parole Board for the application of a similar scheme to the long-term prisoners.
“It may take time but I expect to make further announcements about the implementation of these reforms later in the year.”
The extension of the “jail time for community service” proposal to inmates applying for parole opens the early release mechanism to those in prison for serious crimes.
The Parole Board is only involved in reviewing the sentences of those inmates who have been jailed for periods of at least eight years.
This category includes, among others, murderers, major drug dealers, armed robbers, rapists and those convicted of firearm offences.
Those within that group of inmates who are deemed to represent a risk of further offending would not be released under the new proposals.
However, those with violent records but who have engaged with rehabilitative programmes in jail and are judged to have genuinely benefited from them would be considered.
Some of the early-release mechanisms and swapping jail time for community service sanctions have been recommended in a number of expert reports commissioned by the previous government.
For example, in one such report, the former head of the Probation Service, Seán Lowry, noted that jail sentences in other countries were being commuted to “composite orders” that included counselling along with electronic tagging and community work.
The Lowry report concluded this system in Finland and Norway had proven so successful that prison terms below six and eight months had been abolished or converted to other forms of rehabilitative punishment.
If the same approach was adapted here, committals to prison of sentenced criminals would fall by about two-thirds.
However, such recommendations were not acted on in any meaningful way in recent years, despite the prison population growing at a much faster rate than the supply of new prison spaces.
