Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I genuinely welcome this Bill and commit my party’s support throughout its legislative process. I hope there will be a continuation of the legislative process. We are all in new territory now and the Minister for Justice and Equality cannot stop this Bill, even if she wanted to. I congratulate Fianna Fáil for devoting resources, parliamentary time and Deputy Jim O'Callaghan's skills to producing a thoughtful and well worked out set of proposals that are of central importance to the criminal justice system but are hardly populist or headline-grabbing.

It has been long-standing Labour Party policy to put both the Prison Service and the Parole Board on a statutory basis, independent of the Department of Justice and Equality. The Minister knows my strong personal views in this regard, as well as those of the Labour Party over many years. We have recently been debating in this Chamber the need for Garda reform. This was not just a call for change for change’s sake. We want a root-and-branch examination of the entire criminal justice system to ensure we can be more effective in how we deal with the moderate manifestations of criminality and how it affects communities, especially vulnerable communities. We want to see more gardaí on the ground, patrolling our neighbourhoods. This outcome, however, can only be achieved with the comprehensive reforms analysed and presented for An Garda Síochána. Accordingly, we need changes in structure, organisation and management to ensure the most effective deployment of the Garda. We see the reform agenda as a bottom-up process which will affect the way we deal with every governmental service.

That is just the beginning. The fight against crime includes straightforward Garda-related targets such as improved detection and arrest rates, use of modern technology and smart policing. It also involves the efficient and fair processing of trials and, crucially, arriving at the correct balance of deterrence, punishment and rehabilitation. An approach to crime cannot be structured exclusively at confrontation. It must also target, as far as possible, the actual elimination of crime. This means effective policing, reforms in the way the courts work, improvements in the Prison Service and greater emphasis on the Probation Service.

The State must also tackle with equal vigour the social conditions which give the criminal milieu its energy. There have been many debates recently about north inner city Dublin. The Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality had an opportunity to go there last night. We must look at crime not in isolation but in a holistic way. We are beginning to do this with north inner city Dublin. However, that has to have manifestation right across our country. The Labour Party has long argued for major changes in a crucial set of relationships, namely those between the Garda, the Prison Service, the Department of Justice and Equality, the courts and the probation and welfare service. All of this needs to be examined fundamentally and made subject to much more Oireachtas accountability.

There is an equal need for a wide range of educational, social and economic measures aimed at ending social deprivation and alienation. Our prison system is antiquated, expensive and ineffective. The reformation and rehabilitation of offenders is, at best, sporadic and, at worst, non-existent. In far too many cases, prison does little or nothing to reform its regular inhabitants completely, get them back to a crime-free life and to have a sense of social responsibility. We support the establishment by statute of an independent prisons agency with the function of managing prisons coherently and in a planned and effective manner.

The agency should be autonomous in its operations and should be accountable to the Oireachtas. We need a new management structure that would devolve greater autonomy and responsibility to prison governors in the management of and planning within their own institutions. The Irish Prison Service has its own brass plate and logo, but it remains simply a division of the Department of Justice and Equality. Prison governors are middle-ranking civil servants within the structure of the parent Department, with no real autonomy. New prison legislation should also repeal and consolidate all existing statutes, many of which date from the 19th century. The role and status of visiting committees should be upgraded in the legislation. Of course, as this Bill provides, the advisory committees which deal with the release of long-term prisoners should be placed on a statutory basis as a parole board, as envisaged by Deputy Jim O'Callaghan.

In recent decades the Irish prison population has been increasing in comparison to that in other western European countries. However, a significantly larger percentage of the population have received and served a prison sentence. In other words, we have been sending a relatively larger number of people to jail than we used to in order to serve relatively short sentences. The alternatives to prison, particularly for minor crimes, are not used in this jurisdiction to anything like their potential, yet we cannot argue that a policy of more or less immediate recourse to imprisonment as a short, sharp shock has the appropriate deterrent effect. Our recidivism rate is still unacceptably high. Left to its own dynamic, the prison population will always expand to fill the number of spaces available, as as been proved dramatically in the United States. Therefore, inevitably, there will be overcrowding and the number of prisoners will increase in an unplanned way, a number of whom will require early release, which gives rise to humanitarian and other considerations. In this House we need to examine and address the issue of sentencing policy and the desirability of a policy of incarceration. A comprehensive review should be undertaken by the Oireachtas of sentencing options, with a view to better co-ordination of penal and sentencing policy.

I also mention the Probation and Welfare Service, the Cinderella service of the Department of Justice and Equality. It continues to be under-staffed, with the result that there are too many people in prison who do not need to be there because the resources are not available to deal with them in the community through the Probation and Welfare Service. This should be the primary target of additional resources in dealing with the issue of sentencing. The service also needs to be placed on a statutory basis, to operate independently and with a clearly defined role.

We need serious action on a programme for the reintegration of prisoners once released from prison. This means a comprehensive rehabilitation programme and sentence management, based on the individual needs of released prisoners. Such a programme should plan for reintegration as the norm, enabling prisoners to make well informed choices and assess their personal and educational skills. We should have a robust mechanism to treat mental health problems among prisoners, given that this is a growing problem and a real issue in prisons.

I believe the previous Government did begin to make real progress in implementing the principle that a sentence of imprisonment should be regarded as a sanction of last resort. Community-based sanctions are significantly less costly and, more importantly, have less of an impact on recidivist prisoners. There is great urgency to tackle the conditions associated with and the causes of crime. As I said, the Tánaiste has visited the north inner city. We have to see the crime issue in the round. I look forward to the debate on the Bill, but I also look forward to much more cross-party grappling with the issue of crime to ensure we deploy resources through the budgetary decisions of this Parliament that would really impact on reducing crime levels into the future. I thank Deputy Jim O'Callaghan for introducing the Bill.

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