A British expert yesterday warned Ireland not to follow the example of England and Wales by becoming "addicted to incarceration".
Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust in Britain, was speaking at a conference in Dublin organised by the Community Foundation for Ireland and Philanthropy Ireland. It discussed the high social and financial costs of prisons in Ireland, and the alternatives to imprisonment.
"What we have in England and Wales is a very stark warning . . . to other countries about what happens when you become addicted to incarceration," Ms Lyon said.
"We imprison in England and Wales more people, proportionally, than any other country in western Europe and now many other countries in eastern Europe because our numbers have gone up so starkly. Yet we've got nothing to show for it other than shocking reconviction rates."
She said there was "very little sense" in spending £40,000 (€59,000) a year per prison place, as they do in England in Wales, when reconviction rates had risen in line with the numbers in jail. She said prison was being used as a "social dustbin rather than a genuine place of last resort", and that it needed to be reserved for violent offenders.
"I do genuinely believe that there are other options for people that are cost effective, that are less hard, and actually serve us, the public, and victims far better."
Claire Hamilton, chairwoman of the Irish Penal Reform Trust, presented the trust's Alternatives to Custody report which showed there were 3,080 people in prison in Ireland in September.
The report said the cost of imprisonment was more than €300 million per year.
It recommends that provisions should be made for further use of community sanctions, including a requirement that, save for exceptional circumstances, they be used instead of sentences of less than one year.