Seanad debates

Tuesday, 26 July 2011

Criminal Justice (Community Service) (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2011: Second Stage

 

7:00 pm

Photo of Ivana BacikIvana Bacik (Independent)

I welcome the Minister, Deputy Alan Shatter, although I do so with trepidation, given his indication that he intends to be here more often in the autumn. As Senator David Cullinane observed, those of us who took on the justice brief will be looking forward to an increased workload and an even greater degree of contact with the Minister.

The Bill before us has deservedly received an unqualified welcome from all sides of the House. The Minister outlined the background to the proposals which will apply to any conviction attracting a prison sentence of up to 12 months. This sensible approach marks a departure from the policies of some previous Administrations whose "get tough on crime" approach seemed merely to involve throwing more prison places at the problem without examining the underlying causes of crime and without having regard to alternatives or the purpose of imprisonment.

On any given day there is a much smaller number of inmates in the prison system compared with the numbers being committed to prison every year. The Minister indicated that in 2009, 9,216 persons were given sentences of up to one year - representing 85% of all committals - yet the proportion in custody on a daily basis serving short sentences was only some 15%. This anomaly has been described by a leading Irish criminologist, Dr. Paul O'Mahony, as a paradox of the prison system in Ireland. It arises because we have so many offenders serving short sentences, generally for minor, non-violent offences. There is a question as to what purpose this serves.

Dr. O'Mahony's research shows that prisoners in Mountjoy Prison have, on average, received ten previous custodial sentences, with many undergoing their first period of detention in St. Patrick's Institution, to which Senator Paul Bradford referred as a "university of crime". Unfortunately, it has had a negative effect on many inmates and its closure is long overdue. This was Labour Party policy prior to the general election and its inclusion in the programme for Government is welcome. When is that envisaged to happen? I understand the programme for Government indicated it would take place immediately or as soon as possible. All the international reports on places of detention in Ireland have recommended its closure for many reasons to do with the conditions in it. Another important argument in favour of its closure is that it features in the history of so many prisoners where it seems to serve as the beginning of a cycle of recidivist offending and successive short terms of imprisonment.

I have been a regular visitor to Mountjoy and other prisons in my capacity as a lecturer and criminal lawyer. It is vital that public representatives visit prisons, particularly Mountjoy Prison in which the conditions are appalling. It is worth seeing the cells and the conditions in which inmates are living. There is very little by way of rehabilitation on offer to prisoners in Mountjoy or other prisons throughout the State. The Connect rehabilitation programme which was in place for a period but has since been discontinued showed very positive outcomes for individual prisoners. It worked at a level with prisoners who had difficulties with literacy, anger management, parenting skills and so on. It operated at a different level from the education courses run by the Open University and so on, for which prisoners require a basic level of literacy. Despite the financial crisis, the Minister should consider the provision of funding for some type of rehabilitation project within the prison system. However, it is difficult to engage in that type of rehabilitation where prisoners are committed for short sentences, in which case alternatives to imprisonment are infinitely preferable.

I welcome the Minister's reference to imprisonment as a sanction of last resort. In January, just before the general election, my colleague, the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Pat Rabbitte, and I published a document on penal reform which proposed that this notion of prison as a sanction of last resort should be the guiding principle of penal policy. We observed that the prison population had almost doubled in a decade, with an annual rate of increase of 10%. We pointed to the cost of providing a prison space in Ireland - €79,000 per annum in 2009, according to the Irish Prison Service - giving the State one of the most expensive prison systems in the world. The Minister, Deputy Shatter, has indicated that the cost of community service orders is in the order of 10% to 30% of the cost of a prison sentence. According to our calculations, the average cost of a three-month prison sentence is €18,000, while the average three-month community service order costs €4,000. Therefore, from a cost perspective, as well as from the point of view of engaging in the rehabilitation of individuals, community service orders are a better approach in dealing with minor, non-violent offences.

The latest report of the UN Committee against Torture which was highly critical of some aspects of Irish penal policy recommended that a policy be adopted focusing on the development of alterative non-custodial sanctions, including the enactment of legislation providing that judges be required to consider community service as an alternative to custody. The proposals before us are very much in line with the committee's recommendations. Its recommendations on prison conditions include a proposal that the State eliminate, without delay, the practice of slopping out, a practice about which the Inspector of Prisons has been highly critical in a series of reports, as was his predecessor. In December 2010, in response to a parliamentary question, the previous Minister indicated that 1,003 prisoners out of a total of 43,197 were required to slop out every day. These prisoners have no access to in-cell sanitation and must eat in close proximity to their chamber pot. Moreover, many prisoners are sharing a cell owing to overcrowding in the prison system. It is an inhumane practice which should no longer be tolerated in any Irish prison.

We have had useful debates in this House on the prison system and I hope they will inform the Minister's policy. We spoke earlier about class and crime. The majority of prisoners come from disadvantaged backgrounds and many have mental health difficulties, a huge issue which deserves greater investigation. The issue was highlighted by the appalling murder of Gary Douche which the joint shadow report to the UN Committee against Torture went into in detail. I am grateful to the Irish Penal Reform Trust and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties for its excellent report to the United Nations which outlined many of the problems within the penal system and elsewhere. For a long time there has been a link between disadvantage and crime. Research published in Trinity College Dublin in 1988, entitled Crime and Poverty in Ireland, was the first scientific attempts to examine this. It used data from community health sources on disadvantage and coupled it with District Court records in the Dublin metropolitan district. We found the vast majority of defendants before the District Court were from disadvantaged backgrounds and from the most disadvantaged or deprived areas in Dublin. Even when controlling for the same offence, they were more likely to go to prison than persons from less disadvantaged backgrounds. There are questions about the links between crime and disadvantage and crime and poverty.

There are also questions about overuse of imprisonment and inconsistencies within our sentencing system. The Minister talked about the uneven pattern of community service orders across the country and this is something the Bill will address. There is excellent research by David Riordan in UCC on how community service orders are enforced across Ireland. There is an uneven imposition.

This Bill is welcome because it will reform the practice of imposing community service orders and will ensure, to a much greater extent, that imprisonment is genuinely a sanction of last resort. As an indirect byproduct, it will address serious problems of overcrowding and prison conditions. Ultimately, it is part of a more enlightened and more humane penal policy. I hope some of the forthcoming legislation in the autumn will also be in line with this policy.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.