Professor Ian O'Donnell:

I would like to make three specific recommendations. They are all underpinned by the need to reduce the prison population without putting the public at risk, whether in terms of the extra burden of victimisation or additional costs. Before I outline my recommendations, I would like to make the observation that discussions about crime and punishment tend to have a circular feel to them. When I was compiling my submission, I was reminded that an Oireachtas sub-committee on crime and punishment had met and reported 12 years ago. Some of the observations made by that sub-committee are worth repeating. It is striking that despite the sub-committee's recommendations and the recommendations made by all committees in the last 30 years, the prison population is continuing to increase and the same kinds of recommendations are being restated. It is probably fair to say there is a reasonable degree of consensus about what needs to be done, which is to reserve prison for the most serious offenders or those who pose the greatest threat, to minimise the harm that incarceration poses to such persons and their families and to deal with as many people as possible in the community. The problem seems to be to obliterate the blocks in the way of progress.

It is worth running through a couple of the recommendations made by the previous sub-committee 12 years ago. There was consensus that greater recourse to imprisonment was not the only way in which the problem of crime could be addressed. That consensus continues.

There was a real concern about fine defaulters going to prison. It was suggested there should be a more effective and efficient way of imposing financial sanctions, recovering the moneys involved and reducing the burden on the courts and the prisons. Approximately 1,300 fine defaulters were committed to prison in 2007. That figure had increased to approximately 7,500 by last year. It accounted for almost half of the total number of committals, which is a huge problem. It was very pressing 12 years ago and is even more pressing today.

The idea that the number of prison places is in some way related to the crime rate was challenged vigorously by the sub-committee which drew the conclusion that the size of the prison population was, to some extent, a political calculation that lay within the power of our legislators. It is much more difficult to change the rate of crime. We need to recognise that these two things need to be separate. When that lesson was learned in Finland, it had a dramatic impact on that country's penal policy.

The sub-committee also recommended that statistical models be used to help us to understand how many prison places were required. Such models would require a detailed understanding of sentencing practice. There is a huge informational vacuum in that regard. Interestingly, the sub-committee noted that as Ireland was then in the happy position of lagging behind other European countries, we had the fortune to be able to design a system that prevented some of the unintended harmful consequences of penal expansionism. However, we did not seize that opportunity. The prison population has increased substantially since the sub-committee reported 12 years ago.

I have identified three areas where swift and effective action is possible. I will run through them briefly and we can elaborate on them in our discussions.

First, we should support temporary release on humanitarian grounds or for vocational training purposes, which used to be part of the prison system, particularly around Christmas time when there was a willingness to allow prisoners to go home. They almost always came back on time and if they did not, they generally returned shortly afterwards. It was uncontroversial and attracted very little adverse media comment. There were some years in the mid-1990s when almost one in five prisoners was given temporary release at Christmas. Last year one in 25 prisoners was given temporary release for Christmas. There has been a substantial change in this area. The issue could be addressed quickly. Clearly, there are more prisoners on remand than there were in the past. Such prisoners are ineligible for temporary release. In addition, there are more prisoners from overseas who might not have the community contacts that allow temporary release to take place. The decreased prevalence of temporary release might be an indication of a punitive shift in the criminal justice system. Temporary release is important because it is effective. When the UCD institute of criminology followed up on 20,000 prisoner releases, it found that those who were granted occasional temporary release for vocational or family purposes were significantly less likely to be reimprisoned. That held true up to four years after they were eventually released. That is a clear empirical demonstration of the benefits of showing trust in people and allowing them to repay that trust with good behaviour. Therefore, my first recommendation is that we should return to the situation where there was an openness to allowing this kind of temporary release in a structured and tailored way, rather than as a safety valve to ease overcrowding.

The second recommendation I would like to make relates to parole. There has been very little change in the parole making process for approximately half a century. The Minister for Justice and Equality makes a determination on the issue of release in every single case, having received a recommendation from the Parole Board. The process is secretive and has not been scrutinised in the way it has been in other jurisdictions. It is encouraging that the new chairman is open to this kind of dialogue and open to reform. The reality is that life sentence prisoners who are released on licence today will have spent a decade longer in custody than their counterparts in the early 1980s. The average time before release now is over 17 years. In the 1980s, it was seven years. In almost every case the prisoner in question is someone who has committed murder. It is not as if murders have become much more dangerous in the intervening period. There has been a reluctance to grant parole until people have served huge quantities of time that would have been difficult to imagine 25 or 30 years ago. The parole window could be widened without delay. I know Mr. Costello indicated that there would be cost implications if this were done. In Finland parole is possible after 14 days. In Ireland the earliest possible review is after 1,460 days, the halfway point of an eight year sentence. Why not make parole a possibility for anyone serving four years or more? It is clear that cost implications would arise in the context of the review process, but significant savings could be made in terms of prison time. Last year imprisonment cost €65,000 per prisoner per year. If we open the parole window a little wider, we will have the scope to reduce the prison population in a structured and substantial way. There would be cost savings in that regard.

My final recommendation relates to enhanced remission. It has been mentioned that one third remission, as opposed to the standard one quarter, is possible under the prison rules for prisoners who take part in treatment programmes. The potential of that facility to reduce the prison population has not been exploited. If it were, it would incentivise prisoners to take part in programmes, reduce the threat they pose, reduce overcrowding, usher in a more structured approach to release and save money. It is fair to say politicians in Ireland have often shown restraint that is not evident among politicians elsewhere in the Anglophone world, which is to be welcomed. The debates about penal policy in England, Australia, New Zealand and the United States tend to be much more polarised and punitive. Anything that will allow our context to continue is positive.

The Chairman said at the outset that if we could make some suggestions as to where inquiries could be directed in Finland that would be welcome. I would like to propose two suggestions and then I will finish. What is the sense over there as to the optimum size of a prison? We have had discussions about prison building in recent years which have anticipated gargantuan developments in our scale. What would be considered in Finland or Scandinavia as the optimum prison size, it is for 100, 200 or 300 prisoners. The second point is the Finnish example where we can learn something from them about judicial training. The prison population is driven to a large extent by the behaviour of judges - that is something about which we know very little. There are European Union ways of going about judicial training and it would be very helpful to have a sense of those.