Women make up 20% of prisoners
Arising from these committals a total of 14,182 persons were sent to prison in 2015 compared to 13,408 in 2014. This represents an increase of 5.8%. Of these 14,182 prisoners (79.4%) were male and (20.6%) were female.
These findings come from the annual report of the Irish Prison Service, which was published yesterday.
A standout figure relates to the number of women being sent to prison over the non-payment of fines.
There were 9,883 committals for the non-payment of a court-ordered fine. This is a 10% increase on the previous year, from 8,979 in 2014 to 9,883 in 2015. Of the number of people committed to prison in this way, 73% were male and 27% were female.
There was almost a 10% increase in the number of people sent to prison under sentence last year, compared with 2014.
In 2015 13,987 people were committed to prison under sentence, compared with 12,853 in 2014. This is an increase of 8.8%.
A snapshot of the Irish prison sentence population was taken on November 30, 2015. It showed that there were 3,755 people in custody on that day.
Of these prisoners, 344 were serving life sentences, 681 (the largest cohort) were serving sentences between five and 10 years and 627 prisoners were serving sentences of three to five years.
In terms of the types of crime, the offence for which most people were serving a sentence was theft.
Next was attempts/threats to murder and assault- related offences, followed by homicide and then sexual offences.
“Assessing the 2015 prison figures, what is of particular concern is the rising number of committals to prison that are women,” said Eoin Carroll, advocacy officer in the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice.
The centre is a non-profit organisation working with and on behalf of those suffering disadvantage in society.
“While total committals to prison in 2015 rose by 6.87% (men and women), the number of committals that were women rose by 27.14% (2,685 to 3,415).
“Historically, there was a rapid rise in the number of committals to prison up to 2010, which then levelled off and fell. However, the number of committals to prison that were women has doubled in the past five years,” he said,
The Tánaiste and Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald published yesterday’s prison report as well as the Probation Service Annual Report 2015.
“I note the work being done by the Probation Service to reverse the downward trend in the use of community service orders. The use of prison as a sanction of last resort is a core principle of penal reform and I know the Probation Service has the capacity to take on the supervision and rehabilitation of more offenders,” she said.
Ms Fitzgerald also said that construction work on Cork Prison had offic-ially completed and she would be opening it in the coming weeks.
