The inadequacies and failures catalogued by Government-appointed prison visiting committees in 2003 are nothing short of scandalous. But what is really abhorrent is that, in many cases, the Government and its officials have been aware of the appalling situation for years and have failed to take the necessary corrective action.
Overcrowding, recidivism, drug abuse, a lack of health and educational facilities and the release of prisoners without adequate preparation are just some of the perennial complaints made by the visiting committees.
And while all of this has been going on, the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, has been engaged in a stand-off with the Prison Officers Association (POA) over the cost of prison overtime.
There is, of course, a compelling case to be made for reducing the scale of overtime that allows some basic grade officers earn more than €100,000 a year. Staffing arrangements at Irish prisons must also be modified. The Minister for Justice is determined to reduce the cost of overtime from €64 million to €32 million a year. In pursuit of that objective, some prisons were closed last year when the POA refused to accept new working arrangements. But high costs are not confined to prison officers. The cost of administering the prison service has also grown rapidly in recent years while very little money has been devoted to the needs of prisoners.
Being tough on crime is a sure vote-getter. A campaign of "zero tolerance" proved that definitively in the Irish context. But locking people away doesn't necessarily solve the problem. Mountjoy Jail is understood to have a recidivism rate of about 70 per cent and the inmates come predominantly from a few deprived areas of Dublin. They are invariably poor, with no qualifications and have drug problems.
Last year, our first Inspector of Prisons, Mr Justice Dermot Kinlen, described prison as a finishing school in criminality and, for some, an introduction to drugs. He criticised the absence of effective rehabilitation programmes and the release of prisoners without accommodation arrangements or a structured source of income. Nothing happened.
At its annual conference, yesterday, the POA rejected a proposal by the Minister for Justice to introduce a mandatory drug-testing regime in prisons, on the grounds that our jails are already awash with drugs and no inmate had ever been prosecuted for a drug offence. It was not an acceptable response. If inmates are to be helped through rehabilitation programmes, then the availability of drugs must be addressed. Such a regime may make life more difficult for prison officers in the short-term, but if it helps to break the vicious cycle of recidivism it will be worth it.
Mr McDowell also advocated electronic tagging and a system of restorative justice as an alternative to jail. And he promised to increase the number of prison places by 20 per cent to 4,000. Tough talking. But the failures identified by prison visiting committees remain and fester.