The Minister for Justice is simply playing to the gallery with his shortsighted approach to prisons, writes Rick Lines
The prisons inspector, Justice Dermot Kinlen, has ignited a storm of controversy with his comments on our prison system.
He described our prison system as a failure. He spoke passionately about inhumane prison conditions, lack of rehabilitation programmes, a culture of bureaucratic conservatism within the Department of Justice undermining potential reform, and the resistance to a truly independent prison inspectorate.
While Justice Kinlen's comments are damning, they are not new. Indeed, they are consistent with the conclusions of his reports over the past three years. The real news is that the inspector felt the need to go public with these concerns, which speaks to a frustration that his recommendations have fallen on deaf ears.
While the inspector characterised Justice Minister Michael McDowell as being "too conservative" to effectively reform the prison system, in truth being "too conservative" or "not conservative enough" has little to do with the shortcomings of the Minister's approach.
There are essentially two types of political leaders. Those who surround themselves with the best and brightest minds, and use the gathered expertise to tackle complex issues - even where the expert advice is controversial or at odds with the leader's own beliefs.
Then there are those who are convinced that they themselves possess the best and brightest mind, and surround themselves with people who share, or won't challenge, their opinions.
Reforming the Irish prison system demands the former. Unfortunately, in Michael McDowell, we have the latter.
How else do we explain the parade of policies emanating from the Minister's office that have failed - often miserably - in other countries?
Super prisons, mandatory sentencing, Asbos, electronic tagging - the list goes on and on. The most recent example is the Minister's new prison drug strategy: a policy developed without consulting the National Drugs Strategy Team, the Government's own advisory committee on drugs policy.
Perhaps shutting the Government's own drug experts out of the process explains why Irish prisons are starting mandatory drug testing at exactly the same time the Scottish Prison Service is ending it after 10 years of expensive failure?
In rejecting the inspector's call for new rehabilitative approaches, such as enhanced family visiting and prisoner employment programmes, Mr McDowell stated he intends to run a prison system "in conformity with what ordinary people would want" and to implement policies "most people in Ireland would agree with".
The Irish Penal Reform Trust has long maintained that political and electoral calculations - rather than a commitment to evidence-based best practice - drive Mr McDowell's approach to prison and criminal justice policy. In his comments, the Minister himself admitted as much.
Mr McDowell - along with Enda Kenny, Pat Rabbitte and others who have been climbing over one another for a prime seat on the "get tough on crime" pre-election bandwagon - obviously believes this is what voters want.
Indeed, there will always be a constituency in the electorate and the media for whom no punishment is too harsh, no prison too big.
However, most Irish people are not vindictive in nature, and would gladly swap harsh policies that don't work, for humane policies that do.
Ultimately, people want policies and programmes that are effective - that rehabilitate prisoners and reduce reoffending, help people who use drugs and reduce criminal behaviour by addressing the root causes of petty crime.
"Get tough" approaches rarely accomplish any of these outcomes.
Yet few politicians have the courage to do what works in the face of the predictable, ritualised outrage from the "get tough" crowd.
The United States is the world's biggest jailer, and the country where many of the Minister's failed policies were pioneered. US politicians have developed "get tough" rhetoric into a twisted art form in hopes of winning votes.
Yet three weeks ago, a poll found that, when given a choice, Americans, by a ratio of 9 to 1 , actually want less prison and more rehabilitation for offenders.
Dr Barry Krisberg, of the US National Council on Crime and Delinquency, said: "These survey results tell us that Americans have looked at the 30-year experiment on getting tough with offenders and decided that it is no longer working.
"We have built up an unprecedented prison population of over two million inmates, but most of these offenders are returning home each year with few skills or support to keep them from going back to lives of crime."
We can only hope it won't take 30 years of failed policy in Ireland before we wake up to the same conclusion.
Rick Lines is the executive director of the Irish Penal Reform Trust