Jennifer Horgan: We need to take a more humane approach to people in prison

Less than half of people in Irish prisons have completed the Junior Cycle

A prison guard holding keys to the landing at Cork Prison. According to the Central Statistics Office, 78% of people involved in burglary and theft, released in 2017, reoffended within three years. Picture: Dan Linehan

It is impossible to imagine the hardships suffered by opposition politician Alexei Navalny before he died. His final weeks were endured in “Polar Wolf” Arctic penal colony, a former Stalinist camp, where inmates are reportedly starved and beaten, forced to stand motionless in unbearable temperatures as added punishment for their ‘crimes'.

 Irish prisons are incomparable, and yet, even here we have a substantial appetite for punishment as a way of ‘fixing’ people and protecting society.