Women make up 20% of prisoners

The number of people committed to Irish jails continues to rise, with women making up 20% of the prison population. There were 17,206 committals to prison in 2015, an increase of 6.5% on the 2014 total of 16,155.

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.