Court fines - Prison is not the solution

In the first 10 months of this year, 3,366 people were jailed for failing to pay fines. This is a 56% increase on the 2,154 people who were jailed for defaulting on fines during all of 2008.

There is already serious overcrowding in our jails, which are rife with drugs. It costs taxpayers an enormous amount of money to keep people in jail, and many minor offenders are emerging as drug addicts and a serious threat to society.

Instead of jailing fine defaulters, Fine Gael spokesman on justice, Charlie Flanagan, has called for a change in the law to allow the state to deduct fines from the salaries, or social welfare payments, of defaulters. An Attachment of Earnings Order providing for the deduction incrementally would be a more practical and eminently more effective solution than a prison sentence.

Anybody going to jail for non-payment of a fine emerges from prison still owing the fine. Thus, jailing effectively achieves nothing, whereas such an order would allow the fine to be collected and saves the prison space for more serious criminals.

The suggestion is so eminently sensible one can only wonder why the Government did not introduce such legislation long ago.