THE STATE’S prison population is set to reach 6,000 early next year for the first time as the four-year increase in prisoner numbers shows no sign of abating, new figures reveal.
Prisoners being accommodated in jails across the system yesterday reached 4,409, according to the Irish Prison Service.
However, a further 638 inmates are on temporary release, mainly because there is no space in the prison system to hold them. Added to that, some 409 inmates are unlawfully at large from the system, bringing the total prisoner population at present to 5,456.
Prisoners are mainly at large because they have absconded from open, or minimum security, prisons. Others have failed to return to jail after short periods of temporary release.
The number of inmates is set to increase further in the next two months as the resumption of full criminal court sittings, since last Monday, restarts normal committal trends.
The prison population has grown for a number of reasons. The record number of gardaí at present has led to a record rate of convictions. There is also a trend towards longer sentences, including life terms.
This trend towards a larger prison population, which the Department of Justice and Irish Prison Service have acknowledged is not easing, will push prisoner numbers beyond 6,000 for the first time in the first months of next year. Figures released recently to Liz McManus TD (Lab) reveal the number of people in prison in 2005 was 3,037.
According to figures obtained from the Irish Prison Service by The Irish Times, numbers in jail have grown to 4,409 as of yesterday, a near 50 per cent jump in five years.
The numbers across the prison system exceeds the official bed capacity by about 10 per cent before those at large or on full or reviewable temporary release are taken into account.
Full temporary release involves the permanent release of an inmate before they have served their sentence, even allowing for time off for good behaviour, or remission.
Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said the number of spaces in the system will increase by 490 in the months ahead. When the staggered opening of the new block in Wheatfield Prison, west Dublin, is complete some 120 new places would be available.
A new block in the Portlaoise and Midlands prisons campus would provide 300 extra spaces next year. Works at the woman’s Dóchas Centre in the Mountjoy prison complex in north Dublin would create a further 70 new spaces.
Ms McManus, who recently raised the prison population issue with Mr Ahern in the Dáil, said the Government was pursuing “the easy option” of persisting with a system that jailed people whose crimes did not warrant imprisonment only to release many almost immediately.