Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will make a few general points, many of which were discussed this morning at the meeting of the Joint Committee on Justice and Equality. We are very interested in how the prison system works and will visit prisons all over the island, North and South. The most striking aspect when one visit prisons on a regular basis and meets prisoners and staff is the realisation that prisons do not work as they do not do what they are supposed to do. The idea is that if people do something bad, bold or illegal, we put them in a place of detention in the hope that, first, we will prevent them from reoffending. The plan is that they will not do it again after being dealt with by the prison system. Obviously, however, we know that this is not actually happening. We all agree that, in theory, prison is a punishment, but it is not. The reality is that in many cases it is a punishment in terms of how things are done. Rather than being tougher on individuals, which is popular, partially because of how poorly the media deal with these issues, we should be providing greater support to help them. The vast majority of people in prison come from underprivileged backgrounds and broken families and had troubled childhoods. They need help, but the way we set about dealing with them when they arrive in prison is not based on a philosophy of "let us help these people." It is a case of detaining rather than rehabilitating them. Given that the rate of recidivism is so high and many people do not benefit from the experience of being in prison and reoffend often, surely we should be asking if we could do something different. It is not rocket science. Helping people to make use of their time in prison to give them a different perspective would be money well spent. It is scary that we are paying €70,000 per year to keep a prisoner in jail and actually making him or her worse.

There are so many aspects of the prison system that we need to examine. There are many people in prison who should not be there. We talked this morning about the crazy number of people committed to prison for the non-payment of fines. We had the privilege of being committed for not paying a fine for what had happened at Shannon Airport, but the prison did not actually have room for us. As the prisons were full, they were not even able to keep us overnight.

I completely disagree with the proposal that there be electronic tagging, but I certainly agree with making people do community work rather than keeping them in custody at crazy expense to the State. However, I do not see any serious effort on the part of the State to create the structures and facilities needed to make community service a reality. A lot of thought must be put into how we do it. We do not have the required structures in place. I know that approximately 2,000 people undertook some form of community service last year, but with the proper structures in place, a lot more could do such work rather than being locked up.

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