Dr. Kevin Warner:

Senator Bacik is right. There was a rise, between 1999 and 2004 or 2005, of the prison population in Finland. It drifted up as Professor O'Donnell was saying. When I was doing my research there I asked a number of people why it happened. None of them, neither the academics nor the prison management, could really explain it to me. I think it was that they took their eye off the ball for a bit. I interviewed the director general of the prison system. He told me that around that time there was a proposal to build more prisons in response to this rise, although he was not director general at that time. He said he was very grateful that the Finnish Department of Finance refused funding on the basis that to build more prisons would be a waste of money and that it would make more economic sense to have fewer people in prison.

We have not dwelt much today on the economic issue but, as somebody said, our prisons are enormously costly. There are huge savings to be made from reducing the prison population substantially, notwithstanding what Dr. McCullagh has said. Resources can be diverted into alternatives elsewhere.

The other point that should be made is that open prisons cost about half what closed prisons cost in Nordic countries. They are much more effective in terms of not institutionalising people, preparing them for release and treating them with dignity. In or around 35% of prisoners in Denmark, Finland and Norway are in open prisons. The figure for Ireland is 5%. It seems a no brainer that, as well as reducing the prison population, we should aim to make that switch to open prisons. That should be kept in mind.

As well as reducing its prison population, Finland has made deliberate efforts to switch the proportion of those who remain in gaol to open prisons. It has closed some closed prisons and has opened some new open prisons.