A study has shown that only Norway has fewer inmates per head of population, writes Carol Coulter, Legal Affairs Editor
Ireland has one of the lowest rates of imprisonment in Europe, and one 10 times lower than the US, according to crime expert Dr Ian O'Donnell.
In a paper shortly to be published in the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, Dr O'Donnell points out Ireland had the second lowest number of prisoners in custody on an average day in 2006, with an imprisonment rate of 72 per 100,000 of the population. Only Norway, with 66 per 100,000, had a lower imprisonment rate.
In contrast, the US imprisons about 700 per 100,000 of the population. England and Wales have an imprisonment rate of 147 per 100,000, twice the Irish rate, and, along with Spain, the highest in Europe. Scotland is the third highest, with 141 per 100,000.
The level of imprisonment in Ireland has not changed significantly over the past 15 years, according to Dr O'Donnell, although the absolute numbers have increased. Yet the Department of Justice is committed to a major expansion of prison capacity.
This difference between the 1994 figures and those for 2004 are partly explained by the change in the "temporary release" policy in the mid-1990s, when the pressure on prison spaces meant that a "revolving door" system operated, where prisoners were allowed out before their sentences were served to make room for other prisoners.
Examining the imprisonment records in detail, Dr O'Donnell found that not all those in prison in 2004 were serving sentences. Some were on remand, and this number was increased between 2002 and 2004 because of the change in the bail laws and the building of a new remand prison in Cloverhill.
A further group is made up of illegal immigrants awaiting deportation. These have committed no criminal offence, and should not be counted as part of the convicted population or, indeed, held in prison at all. Therefore, while the total number of people in custody was 1,000 more in 2004 than a decade earlier, this shrank to 400 more when those on temporary release were added back in to the 1994 figures, and remand prisoners and illegal immigrants removed from the 2004 figures.
When the increase in population over that decade is taken into account, the actual rate of committal to prison per 100,000 of the population is shown to have hardly changed at all over the decade. It was 71.3 in 1994 and 71.8 in 2004, similar to what it was last year.
"In 1994 recorded crime was accelerating towards a peak and the prisons were crowded," Dr O'Donnell writes. "However, official policy was to strive for an upper limit of between 2,200 and 2,300 on the number of offenders in custody (Department of Justice, 1994, para 3.18).
"By 2004 there was talk of designing a system for over 4,000 even though the level of sentenced prisoners had changed little and the total population incarcerated fell well short of this number. In the absence of detailed cost-benefit analyses this apparent enthusiasm to incarcerate is difficult to understand." Dr O'Donnell suggests that one reason for this was that a more buoyant economy made the economic cost of imprisonment less of an issue for policymakers.
"The determination to continue an ambitious prison-building programme takes place in a national context where little is known about the drivers of prison population growth," he writes.
"It is difficult to see how a reliable statistical model could be devised to predict the future size and shape of the Irish prison population given the lack of sentencing statistics and the fact that there is no common data model in use across the various criminal justice agencies.
"Estimates are based on what is considered to be an acceptable supply of prison spaces according to criteria that are based on perceived operational requirements, or political judgment calls, rather than being rooted in a clear evidence base."