Break this cycle

THE admission by the Irish Prison Service that 293 prisoners have escaped from jails since 2010 — more than one a week — is another blow to the integrity of our justice system and undermines public confidence in the effectiveness of our jails.

Prison authorities will rightly say though, that they are swamped by people who should not be in jail at all, people sent to them because they have not paid fines or television licences.

This is a bizarre and wasteful use of scarce resources in an age when it is relatively simple, technologically at least, to secure an online payment.

These escape figures are another argument for extending the idea proposed for the collection of water charges to other debts owed to the State.

More importantly, an extension of that idea would create an opportunity to restore some of the credibility so freely squandered by a justice system that still seems to rely on procedures and solutions from another age.

Ironically, such a pay-up system would be a better deterrent than a leaky jail.

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