Fine Gael, traditionally the State's most conservative voice on justice, is challenging the notion that increasing prison places reduces crime.
The party is calling for more alternatives to imprisonment, such as extended community service, supervised work and residential schemes. It challenges the basis for the Government's proposals to virtually double the number of prison places, saying that increasing the prison population as a means to tackle crime is a "myth".
At the publication yesterday of an FG discussion paper, Alterna- tives to Prison, the party spokesman on justice, Mr Jim Higgins, challenged the notions that increased imprisonment reduced crime.
He said studies showed that 77 per cent of prisoners reoffended after release. However, in cases where offenders had completed community service work as an alternative to custody, the reoffending rates were negligible.
The FG document says: "The 70 per cent of repeat offending among our prison population is the clearest indication that imprisonment as a method of reform and rehabilitation in most cases is a costly and counterproductive failure.
"It is a reality with which every democratic state in the developed world is struggling to come to terms. We in Ireland must face up to it, too. The myth that prison is the only and best way of tackling crime in our society has finally burst.
"Increasing the prison population by a further 25 per cent would have the very unsatisfactory effect of reducing crime by just 1 per cent because most crime is not reported.
"Indeed, far from being a deterrent, prison has become a badge of honour, particularly among the criminal underworld in certain areas of Dublin. For many young people caught up in the alluring web of criminality, a `stretch in the 'Joy' is an undaunting culmination to a profitable if short career in crime.
"It is no longer seen as tough to spend time in prison. What is tough is to take the consequences of one's actions, to compensate the victim, to force people to repair the damage they have done and to repay their debt to the individual and to society in a productive way."
The party proposed the introduction of a scheme for forcing offenders to be confronted by their victims. This scheme has been in place in New Zealand and Australia for some years and is under test in the Thames Valley Constabulary area in England.
Under it offenders are compelled to apologise to their victims in cases where the victims agree to the confrontation. Mr Higgins said there was evidence that this "restorative justice" was a "way of bringing criminals face to face with a sense of the reality and lasting effects of the damage that they have done. I understand it has a very high success rate."
Calling for enhanced resources for the Probation Service, the document said that the Prison Service has a budget of £100 million and a "turnover" of 10,000 inmates annually. The Probation and Welfare Service, with a turnover of 5,000 offenders, operates on a budget of £12 million.
It said that each new prison space costs £110,000 and the cost of the current prison-building programme was £90 million. The annual costs of keeping a prisoner in jail was £46,000. The current increase in the prison population of around 840 would add £38.6 million.
It accused the Government of "auction politics" in promising an additional 1,200 extra prison places during its lifetime. "There has been no explanation or rationale advanced as to how this figure was determined. No clear underlying strategy was advanced in support of this huge increase in prison accommodation."
The FG proposals were welcomed by the Probation and Welfare Officers' Branch of IMPACT. The proposals would require the trebling of staffing levels of the service from 190 to 600.
It said: "The case is overdue that the Irish State must commit itself to the wholesale development and resourcing of community sanctions. Fine Gael's proposal acknowledges that community sanctions' rightful place is at the centre of the criminal justice system."