Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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Question 229: To ask the Minister for Justice and Law Reform the number of persons imprisoned who are serving a life sentence. [34214/10]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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I wish to inform the Deputy that on 28th September 2010 there were 282 life sentenced prisoners in custody.

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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Question 230: To ask the Minister for Justice and Law Reform the number of persons serving sentences of one year or less who previously served a similar sentence in a prison or a place of detention having been previously convicted of a criminal offence. [34215/10]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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I wish to inform the Deputy that on 27 September 2010 the number of persons serving sentences of one year or less was 635. It is not possible to provide figures to the Deputy on whether these persons had previously served a similar sentence in a prison or a place of detention without the manual examination of all their individual records. This would require a disproportionate and inordinate amount of staff time and effort and could not be justified in current circumstances where there are other significant demands on resources.

However, the Deputy may wish to note that the Irish Prison Service facilitated a major study of prisoner re-offending by the UCD Institute of Criminology, published in 2008. That study found that 27.4% of released prisoners were serving a new prison sentence with one year. This rose to 39.2% after two years, 45.1% after three years, and 49.2% after four years. The fact that over 50% of prisoners do not re-offend within four years of release compares well internationally.