Professor Jennifer Schweppe:

I will give the Deputy an example. We were given information about the prison population on a particular day in November. There was a woman in prison for refusing to comply with an instruction from a garda. I cannot understand, as someone who teaches criminal justice and who knows that the principles underlying our justice system are those of rehabilitation and reintegration, why a prison sentence would be given to an individual for refusing to obey an instruction from a garda. Rather than looking at the prison figures, I would ask why that woman is in prison. How many times has her house been raided by the Garda?