Electronic tagging of offenders will not reduce crime and would likely increase costs in the justice system, the Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) warned today.
Proposals to introduce the measure are due before Cabinet in the coming weeks with a view to publishing legislation before the end of March, a Department of Justice spokesman confirmed today.
The measure is intended to relieve prison overcrowding by tagging offenders who would otherwise be sent to jail for relatively low-level crimes such as public order offences, Minster for Justice Mr McDowell told the Prison Officers Association (POA) annual conference last May.
He told the conference that trials abroad were sufficiently advanced to merit consideration in Ireland. Today the The Irish Timesreported that officials at his Department have been briefed on the use of tagging in Britain by Home Office officials in recent months.
The IPRT says international experience shows the measure as envisaged in Ireland is ineffective because the type of offenders targeted are low-risk reoffenders, and custodial sentences are in practice not usually sanctioned.
Executive director Mr Rick Lines said there is an "urgent need" to develop alternatives to prison, "however there is little evidence that electronic tagging is a way to accomplish this".
"Electronic tagging offers no alternative to prison for a group where the vast majority are unlikely to receive prison sentences to begin with, and introduces new financial costs to monitor people who would not normally be judged to require it. Therefore the suggestion that tagging will reduce prison numbers and budgets falls apart under scrutiny," Mr Lines said.
IRPT research shows less than 6 per cent of public order offenders are jailed, he added.
He also referred to experience in Canada that showed tagging did not reduce recidivism. Community-based supervision and other such alternatives to incarceration are needed but are underfunded, said Mr Lines.
He also said plans to increase prison spaces making Ireland one of western Europe's top five per capita incarcerators despite having one of its lowest crime rates, shows the inconsistency of the Minister's position.
But Fine Gael justice spokesman Mr Jim O'Keeffe welcomed the move and said the system has been very successful in other countries, citing Britian, where he said fewer than three per cent of tagged offenders have reoffended.
"Tagging is a cost-effective way of dealing with certain crimes, and at a cost of €4,000 per offender, it is far cheaper than sending someone to jail," Mr Higgins said.
The Green Party argued the Government would be better off spending money on more and better resources for the probation services.
"A properly resourced probation service would be able to do its job more effectively particularly in the overseeing of community service orders," the party's justice spokesman Mr Dan Boyle said.
"What is needed is less of the novel and more of making sure that the probation services are properly resourced and allowed to work properly."
The Labour spokesman on justice, Mr Joe Costello, called on Mr McDowell to clarify his plans. "I agree with the Irish Penal Reform Trust that tagging should not be used for offenders who would not normally receive a custodial sentence," he said.
"Many of the offenders concerned would be teenagers and young offenders who would be better targeted with greater investment in the resourcing and personnel of the Juvenile Liaison Scheme and in community servce."