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As overcrowding grows, early release programmes may come onto the agenda
The harrowing picture of condition in Irish prisons painted by the Irish Penal Reform Trust is of a piece with the findings of the Government’s own watchdog, the Inspector of Prisons.
One figure stands out from the recent report of the IPRT, which campaigns for prisoner rights. More than two thirds of the current prisoner population of around 5,400 cannot go to the toilet in private. Prison is meant to be a deterrent and a punishment, but that does not require daily humiliation. The IPRT and Inspector of Prisons reports confirm that the increased jailing of criminals has clearly outpaced the ability to house them in humane conditions.
The average number of people in custody on any given day rose by 10 per cent last year, while the number of places added to an already overcrowded system rose by 4 percent. The current plan to deliver another 1,500 places by 2031 will not even meet the existing shortfall, never mind any increase in the numbers being committed to prison as a consequence of demographic or policy changes.
The Minster for Justice Jim O’Callaghan and his colleagues should look across the Irish Sea to see where the current trend of sending more and more people to already overcrowded prisons is inevitably headed; wholesale and politically damaging early release programmes. The British government freed around seven hundred prisoners under early release provisions last week in order to address overcrowding in prisons in England and Wales.
Some 2,000 prisoners are expected to be released over the next month, some of them with convictions for domestic abuse and violent offences. Another 3,000 will be released over the next year from a system considered less overcrowded than the Irish one. The Irish equivalent would be releasing 270 prisoners on top of the more than 500 already on temporary release under various schemes.
It would doubtless provoke a similar reaction from sections of the media, victims groups, Garda representatives and Opposition politicians as seen across the water.
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