Ciarán Cannon (Fine Gael)

I am sure many of us will recall the "Prime Time Investigates" documentary during the week on crime which focused predominantly on Limerick. My son and I watched the programme together and we were horrified at the sense of despair and utter hopelessness of so many young people in that part of the country. They had deserted society simply because it seemed to have deserted them. In the light of the programme, I find it appalling, shocking and deeply saddening that the Government has chosen this week to reduce the budget for one programme which might have helped some of the people in question out of the difficulties in which they find themselves, namely, the youth justice programme which has been in operation since 2005. The Government has slashed the budget for the programme by 25%.

Child benefit and dole payments are being cut, yet it is intended to continue spending €100,000 per year in keeping minor offenders within the prison system. I would very much appreciate an opportunity to debate the matter at the earliest possible time, as we urgently need to examine prison policy. A total of 60% of prison sentences are for one year or less. I have said on many occasions since we entered into the economic crisis that it gives us licence and authority - in fact, it demands this from us - to do things substantially differently from now on. We need to focus on the prison system and fundamentally reform the way it works. On purely pragmatic grounds, spending €100,000 per year to keep each prisoner in the prison system represents a ridiculous waste of money and makes no sense whatsoever on humanitarian grounds. It is a self-defeating exercise. A total of 40% of former inmates reoffend. Therefore, the more people we send to prison, the higher the prison population will be.

In the mid-1990s Canada faced a budgetary crisis that required the government to cut public spending by 20%, something that seems familiar to us now. As part of the cuts, officials reduced the country's prison population by 11%. The state released low-risk inmates and introduced more community-based sentences. Crime did not surge and chaos did not reign. During the following decade the number of assaults and robberies decreased by 23%, burglaries by 35% and murders by an astonishing 43%. We need to get beyond the dichotomy of being perceived as being either tough on crime and, therefore, in favour of more prison sentences or soft on crime and, therefore, in favour of fewer prison sentences. It is not the case. Sending people to prison does not help to reduce crime. In fact, prison systems such as ours lead to more crime.