Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will not press the amendment. As the Minister of State can appreciate, the reason Senator Boyhan and I put down the amendment was so there could be a more discursive debate on the subject than would have happened if we simply had a Second Stage debate, which would have petered out after short contributions. In that context, I thank the Leader of the House for agreeing to an extension of the time for debate because it is useful that we discuss on the record the wider implications of what we are and are not doing and how these things can be achieved.

When it comes to Thornton Hall, I do not believe in the "lock 'em up" approach. It is usually younger men rather than women who go to prison, but I regard any person who is sent to prison as a personal tragedy, especially in our present prison system. Despite all the efforts of the prison officers and Prison Service staff, it is very difficult to turn somebody out from a prison in a better condition than when he or she went in. There are many reasons that the reverse often takes place.

In respect of what Senator Bacik said, I have always taken the view that prison must be a measure of last resort. I always believed that there should be, in statute form, a clear indication that a district judge who sentences somebody to six months in jail should set out in writing the reasons that no other approach is appropriate. If it had to be in their own handwriting, it might give judges 20 minutes to reflect on whether they are doing something good for the young man - it is usually a man - or for society. What will be the net result?

It is often the case that a district judge imposes a sentence to teach a lesson in the knowledge that a Circuit Court judge to whom an appeal will almost certainly be made will suspend the sentence. A judge may frighten the bejaysus out of somebody in those circumstances but there are people who, for whatever reason, do not get to appeal. They go into the system and are spat out in a worse condition than they went into it. Governors of prisons do their best through temporary release and so on. The Prison Service does its best to look after prisoners by allocating them to different kinds of institutions but, in the end, that is the situation.

Returning to Senator Bacik's point, our population is growing. I foolishly said at one stage that Dublin gangland was nearly finished because it was the sting of the dying wasp.