Unpaid fines - System is becoming a sick joke
This would suggest that a record 9,400 are likely to be committed in 2012, which will exceed last year’s record total of 7,514. That would amount to a 25% increase.
Justice Minister Alan Shatter warned in 2011 that the biggest challenge facing the prison service was the number of people being committed to prison, even though they were already overcrowded.
Last year he noted, for instance, that the number of people sentenced to less than three months in jail had increased by 27.9%, which was largely due to the number of people sentenced for non-payment of court-ordered fines.
A cross-section of prisoners in jail on one day at the end of Nov 2010 found that just 15 people of the 6,683 people sentenced to less than three months in prison for non-payment of fines were in jail on that day. Statistically, it should have been around a hundred times that number.
The prisons are already overcrowded and more people than ever are being sentenced to jail.
It does not require much brainpower to realise that people convicted of more serious crimes must be released to make room for those being jailed for non-payment of fines, or the latter category must be promptly let go.
The reality is that even though more and more people are being sentenced to prison for non-payment of fines, fewer people are actually serving any time.
As a result, those people are basically thumbing their noses at the system.
Far from acting as a deterrent to crime, the fine system is becoming a sick joke that is promoting contempt for the law.
The State is going to the expense of bringing those people to jail and then bringing them home again. This is crazy.
Legislation passed in Jun 2010 was supposed to cut the jailing of people who fail to pay fines, but this legislation will not be implemented until 2013, after the enactment of the Fines (Amendment) Bill.
The unpaid fines should be deducted from any State payments that defaulters are receiving.
It was recently disclosed that 13 politicians were overpaid on their pensions.
Jackie Healy-Rae was overpaid by €1,670 a month, but he says he is unable to repay the money.
There may be no end to where the whole thing could finish up, he warned.
He and the other dozen should be invited to make an arrangement to have to sum owed deducted from their monthly pension.
If the State is compelled to take judicial action to require such deductions, the costs of such action should be charged against those politicians. The law is there to protect people, and it should therefore be enforced.
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