Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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Question 57: To ask the Minister for Justice and Law Reform the number of prisoners presently serving sentences of one year or less in each of our prisons; the weekly cost of such sentences to the taxpayer and the estimated comparative cost to the taxpayer if each such prisoner had been sentenced to a maximum period of community service [39467/10]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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In the vast majority of offences, the Oireachtas has provided the courts with a number of options for disposal of such cases including fines, the Probation of Offenders Act, community service orders and imprisonment. It is a matter for the sentencing judge to decide what is the appropriate sanction in individual cases depending on the circumstances of the offender and the particular facts of the case. I am of the view that there is scope for greater use of community service orders in relatively minor cases and have prepared legislative proposals that will require courts to consider imposing a community service order in any case where they had envisaged imposing a prison sentence of 6 months or less. I expect to bring these proposals to Government for approval for drafting in the next few weeks.

The number of prisoners on 27 October 2010 serving a sentence of less than 12 months in each prison are set out in the table below.

Based on the average cost of an available staffed prison space for 2009 (€77,222), the weekly cost of providing a staffed prison space was €1,485.

The Probation Service recently carried out a pilot study of two urban Community Service teams. Based on 2008 figures, this pilot study showed that the average cost of a community service order for 2008 was €2,500. The average number of hours for the community service orders is approximately 150 hours. The maximum number of hours allowed for by the Criminal Justice (Community Service) Act, 1983 is 240.

It should be in borne in mind that most of the costs associated with both imprisonment and community service orders are fixed costs.