THERE ARE signs that the number of people being sent to prison may have peaked last year, after a decade of extraordinary, politically inspired growth. A key driver behind this welcome development has been a reduction in the number of public order and drug-related crimes since the recession began. The hope now is that the prison population will begin to fall rapidly as a series of measures, designed to minimise incarcerations for the non-payment of debt and the application of community service orders, take effect.
Conditions within our major prisons are a public scandal and have been condemned as “degrading, inhumane and unsafe” by human rights organisations. They were regarded by a former inspector of prisons as “finishing schools for crime”. Gross overcrowding and unsanitary conditions persist. Drug gangs have become organised there and threaten not only the authority of prison staff but the capacity of the institutions to act as rehabilitation centres. This is not just about prison conditions, which are truly horrendous. It is about what happens when young men return to their communities, angry and embittered by their prison experiences and with little likelihood of work because of their record.
For more than a decade, reformers have been pressing for the introduction of alternative punishments to prison. But their voices were swallowed up as politicians made getting tough on crime a major electoral issue and pressurised the judiciary into a harsher response by passing laws requiring minimum sentences. That tide has now turned. Last year, a law requiring judges to consider community service orders as an alternative to jail sentences of 12 months or less was passed. New provisions in relation to the payment of fines and debts have also been introduced.
The judiciary will have a major role to play if these measures are to succeed in cutting prison numbers. But the Government must provide adequate resources to monitor community service orders and ensure the public understands and supports what is being done. Because of financial constraints, plans for new prisons in Dublin and Cork have been modified and they are unlikely to be built anytime soon. Those are serious setbacks.
But they must serve to emphasise the importance of community orders as an alternative to jail when young men commit minor offences. The lifelong stigma of a criminal record closes off avenues of personal development and damages both offenders and society.