A prison sentence is viewed as a status symbol, rather than as a punishment, by many Irish inmates, a gathering of European sociologists and academics heard yesterday.
Karen Sugrue, a lecturer in sociology and communications at Limerick Institute of Technology, said there was a "prison class" in Ireland for whom a jail sentence was a rite of passage.
"All the studies show that prison acts neither as a deterrent nor a means of rehabilitation, so if it is not a punishment we have to ask what its purpose is." Ms Sugrue was speaking at FESET 2006, the fifth annual conference of European social care educators, which continues at Sligo Institute of Technology today.
According to Ms Sugrue, 95 per cent of the Irish "prison class" are from poor or disadvantaged backgrounds.
"We view young people who commit crime through our own middle-class lens, but we have to realise that prison is part of their lifestyle, something that their friends and neighbours and possibly their fathers or older brothers have been through," she said.
"You actually hear them comparing sentences or detention centres that they have been in, sometimes in a boastful way."
Ms Sugrue insisted that recidivism rates showed prison did not act as a deterrent and did not rehabilitate.
"The last time I checked it cost €90,000 to keep one person in detention for a year. If it is not a punishment and not a deterrent, we have to ask why we are putting huge amounts of money into a system that is not achieving anything."