Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister for his comprehensive outline of the Bill, whose publication I welcome. The Minister, of course, is aware this was part of two pieces of legislation planned by the previous Government, the other being the Fines Bill. The point was to get away from the ridiculous practice of putting people into prison for non-payment of fines. Many find it difficult to pay fines and, as I have pointed out many times, a €1,000 fine to a person on social welfare is very different to the same fine for a person on an income of €100,000 per year. There is an inherent inequality and one often finds that those who do not pay fines are those on lower incomes.

This Bill builds on the approach that prison should be a last resort. The idea that Irish society will somehow be made safer by putting more and more people in prison defies logic and goes against all that experience tells us. I am very disappointed that the previous Bill, in which discretion was left to the Judiciary, was used so little. There has been an increase in the numbers involved but when one looks, only 28 court districts used the Act primarily. There seems to be a reluctance on the part of the Judiciary to use community service orders and which may be related to the fact that many judges who come from certain classes of society may not be looking behind the reasons so many people arrive in prison.

One of the frightening aspects of this is that our society is no safer than it was 20 years ago although in the past 14 years the prison population has doubled. I have constantly opposed the clamour every time there is an outrage, when people say the answer to every problem is to have longer and longer sentences. I do not believe that is true. I remember discussing this issue at length with prison governors in Britain when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. They were very clearly of the view that the policy of longer sentences being followed by the British Government at that time was not reducing crime. Not only did it have the opposite effect, it overcrowded the prisons.

Today we must reflect on why we send people to prison. Is it revenge? Is it punishment? Is it a deterrent? Is it as a form of rehabilitation? Is it for public safety? The idea of prison for public safety makes eminent sense. If there is a person who is a significant danger to society keeping him or her in prison is eminently sensible. However, I am not big into the revenge stakes. This society seems very hung up on punishment and revenge; I shall speak on that shortly. I do not believe prison acts as a deterrent. I do not believe that people who break the law say, "I wonder how many months I'm going to get", or "Will I be sent to prison? Better not do it today". It is not an effective deterrent. Society norms are much more effective. In many cases, particularly for young people on short sentences, prisons are universities of crime. People go in for reasonably minor offences and come out affected by drugs and having learned the tricks of their trade from hardened people within prison.

Therefore, we need to look at our entire attitude towards law enforcement. The best law enforcement of all is the buying in by society in general to the laws of the land. There are many areas in this country where there is very little visible law enforcement by law enforcement officers yet where the law is largely complied with because people buy into it, feel they have a stake in society and believe compliance is the right thing because it is in the common interest. It is fair to say all the relevant academic research will show that prison sentences for short-term prisoners is a most ineffective policy tool in regard to the prevention of crime.

I believe all the evidence shows that where there is recurring crime there is social deprivation. If we spent more money dealing with social deprivation and less on locking up people, particularly young people from disadvantaged areas, we would make much more progress in reducing crime. Some years ago there was a statistic which showed that 50% of the prison population in Dublin came from six parishes in the city. I do not believe the people in those parishes were born inherently worse or different but they live in areas that are socially excluded, in segregated housing, in areas of high family breakdown and where there is intergenerational unemployment and difficulties.

I had responsibility for the RAPID programme which I hope the new Government will re-boot as it seems to have reduced its profile in recent months. It was a key programme in that it took an intellectual approach to tackling one of the major issues in the most socially deprived and disadvantaged areas in our country. One of the characteristics of such areas is the lack of buy-in by the population into the society in which it lives. In large measure, the people do not feel part of the mainstream of Irish society and believe they are always at a disadvantage. Even though the State pays an enormous amount of money in those areas, often the reality is that everything is decided for the population and the people have very little input into decisions such as the design of houses and estates and the provision of community facilities and services. The RAPID programme gave input to local people in decisions that affected them for the first time. We put in 42 playgrounds with the support of the local communities and only one of those was ever seriously vandalised because where the community put a facility in place, it had respect for it. If we are interested in reducing crime, we would be better engaged in looking at the social phenomena behind the crime rather than thinking that by locking people up we will achieve results. I hope that any money saved here would be put into the RAPID programme to deal with the underlying social problems faced by people in these areas.

It is interesting to look at the costs. Prison is incredibly expensive. The cost of a community service order is about 15% of the cost of a prison sentence; the average community service order costs €4,000 while a prison sentence costs €27,000. That shows the potential savings but if we really want value for money, we should take those savings and reinvest them to deal with the underlying social difficulties faced by people in these communities.

I do not see the point, unless there is an horrendous traffic offence, in putting people in prison for motoring offences. They could be banned from driving if they are dangerous behind the wheel of a car. I also see no point in imprisoning people for non-payment of fines or putting young people in prison for getting into what was euphemistically termed "trouble" when I was growing up. We should try to deal with the underlying issues, such as a lack of education, or recognise that sometimes people go off the rails and try to put them back on the right path by engaging with them on a community basis.

The FAI and other sporting organisations did a great deal to reduce crime by increasing access to sports in socially disadvantaged areas. When midnight soccer was organised, crime and anti-social behaviour fell in the areas where it took place. I wanted to increase access to those programmes because children in disadvantaged areas remain disadvantaged because many activities that are seen as extras for middle class children are unavailable to them. A child from an advantaged background is brought to sports, music and dancing. The child from a disadvantaged background or a dysfunctional family does not get the opportunity to do these things and is left hanging around the streets. If children are left hanging around the streets long enough with nothing to do, no motivation and no involvement in any organisation, it is obvious what will happen.

By putting in place those extra activities, which I saw as fundamental, we were doing more to deal with potential crime in the long term than many of the law enforcement and crime prevention programmes. I compliment the gardaí on the work they have done in youth liaison programmes. I remember a visit to Moyross in Limerick, a group had bought a set of motorbikes and showed children in a totally controlled environment how to ride them. I asked if the group had permission to use the rough bit of ground it was using and it said it did not bother looking for permission; it just got on with the job. That group was dead right because I can imagine 100 bureaucratic reasons that would be given to stop the children from being involved in an activity they loved in a controlled environment. I suggested to Bord na Móna that in cut away bogs children could undertake dangerous activities in a safe way. We could then deal with some of the problems related to joy-riding by allowing them to become involved in adventure sports in a safe, controlled and supervised environment.

Does prison work as a deterrent? It is self evident. We have longer prison sentences and more people in prison but we have not dealt with the crime problem. This idea that if we lock people up for longer and longer, it will frighten other people from committing crime does not work. Does punishment work? I am not a fan of the punishment argument - I am probably in a minority there - but we must look behind the social causes of crime. Rehabilitating people, to bring them back into the mainstream of society so they value the laws and understand why they exist for the good of everyone, is much more important than punishment.

I am lucky to live in an area of low crime and it is interesting to look at why it is that way. It is nothing to do with the law or fear of punishment, it is because people believe they have a stake in society and are part of it, that an orderly society is a good place to live and it is in no-one's interest to go around breaking the law.

We should examine the purpose of these measures and ask if we have organised a society that excludes and punishes people and then blames them for committing crime rather than asking why certain types of crime are predominant in certain areas. Are people that excluded? Yes they are. When I was Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, we mapped the areas of disadvantage around the country. All of the standard indicators of poverty were used but it was pointed out that there was one simple test that coincided with the maps 95% of the time: the number of Ticketmaster sales in every area. I said that was ridiculous, that people in the most isolated areas would not buy Ticketmaster products. If they go to matches, they do not buy tickets from Ticketmaster. I was told I was wrong, that if the RAPID areas of the country, the 51 most disadvantaged communities, were mapped and compared with a map of low Ticketmaster sales, there was 95% correspondence. That was done and I saw it was correct because it shows engagement in society, opportunity and activity. We even checked the offshore islands and more children from those islands were attending concerts, matches and other social events. They were more involved socially in the most isolated rural areas than people living in Cherry Orchard, Clondalkin, Darndale and Tallaght, who are much nearer to these major events. It is a simple test that demonstrates the disconnection and exclusion of those young people from what is considered by the vast majority of Irish society, urban and rural, as the norm for a young person growing up. Therefore, if we are serious about tackling crime we must take the long view; there is no quick fix. The only real fix to reduce crime is to tackle the issue of social exclusion, especially in urban areas, to move away from the model which holds that the answer for disadvantaged areas is to pick up the criminal and put him in prison. That model suggests harder and tougher laws will solve it all, but they will not. We know that if we got every drug baron in the country and put him in prison tomorrow, within two years there would be a new set of drug barons in the same disadvantaged areas doing the same business and one would have to lock all of them up as well. Therefore, we must tackle the underlying problem and this is a small first step along the way.

It is interesting to consider the international comparisons. There has been a great drive in Finland to make greater use of early release and alternatives to custody such as community service and it has seen the virtual abolition of imprisonment for non-payment of fines. There has been a continual reduction in the prison population in Finland since the Second World War as a result. Let us imagine the money we would have to deal with the underlying social problems if we reduced the prison population. Finland has reduced the level of the prisoners from 200 per 100,000 of population at the end of the second World War to a European low rate of 60 prisoners per 100,000 of population. The figure in Ireland is relatively low, thank God, and there has not been a tradition of a large prison population, but it has been rising and it has doubled. We should aim for the rate of 50 or 60 prisoners per 100,000 of population. Paradoxically, were we to do so we could reduce crime by using the savings to prevent and divert people from crime. The Finnish situation is interesting because it has lower prison rates than comparable countries such as Norway and Sweden. However, it has a more or less identical crime rate.

This Bill is important; it is a step in the right direction and I trust the Minister will see it as one small step. The name of the Department of Justice and Equality translates in the Irish language to An Roinn Dlí agus Cirt agus Comhionannais, or the department of law and justice. Unfortunately, in the past it has been more the department of law than of justice and there has been a preoccupation with law and more law. As the Minister is aware, the Department has an efficient factory that has produced laws every day of the week for him.

What keeps most people on the straight and narrow is the law. In most cases those who keep the law are those who have a buy-in or a stake in society. Those who break the law believe the law is not for them because they do not belong to that society so there is no reason they should keep the law, even though it is made by the people. Until we tackle this fundamental issue we can forget about reducing crime levels and making society safe.

I exclude from what I have said, persons who for reasons of mental illness or other issues pose a continuous and serious risk to society. Naturally, for the safety of society such people should be kept in custody. In some cases the issue is more medical than anything else and the question of whether it should be prison or custody for the sake of safety in a more quasi-medical set-up should be examined. Perhaps this should be the place for people with psychiatric difficulties or who may be a continuous threat to society.

A well-known friend of mine said that with regard to crime, society often moves from the belief that punishment is the answer to the problem to the recognition that in certain cases the problems are, basically, underlying medical issues and that they may be better addressed by medicalising the problem. There has been a similar recognition in the treatment of alcohol problems in recent years. Now, we recognise alcoholism as an issue of dependency to be treated medically rather than punished. In cases where people are a serious risk to society we must consider whether there are medical issues that determine that there should not be a prison sentence or fixed sentencing and whether by being let out they would represent a high risk to society. The tragedy is that 15% of people are in our prisons for a short term. One of the most horrific crimes in my constituency in recent years was committed by someone who should have been in prison at the time the horrendous crime was committed, a crime which caused great emotional upset not only in this country but to the family living in a foreign country.

I welcome the Bill and I look forward to its enactment. I welcome the extension from six months to 12 months. It is an important change and the more we divert, the better we will be and the more money we will have to do other things for the good of society and to reduce crime.

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