Vivian Geiran: Why are we addicted to prisons?

Prisons do have a place in our penal system. Yet, they should never be seen as the only — or even the most significant — contributor to keeping us safer

When prisons are overcrowded and conditions there deteriorate, both for prisoners and staff, prisons become more unstable, criminogenic, and ‘net contributors’ to increasing the dangerousness of those inside, and of increasing their likelihood of offending after their release. File picture

According to official figures from the Irish Prison Service, prison numbers and overcrowding in Ireland have reached an all-time high, with the prison population exceeding 5,000 for the first time.

This may seem to be of little direct concern to many of us, especially anyone who believes that once those receiving custodial sentences actually go to prison and serve their sentence, there is little if anything else to be concerned about. 

But prison numbers and overcrowding should be a concern for all of us, if we want safer communities. 

I wrote about the same issue in this newspaper just over a year ago, when the prison population had risen just above 4,600 — a 15% increase on the year before. The present population number is now a further 9% increase on last year’s level.

Last year, I cited a prison manager who referred to overcrowding as having “a wrecking ball effect” on all aspects of jail functioning, including making rehabilitation increasingly difficult if not impossible. 

Recently, a number of authoritative bodies have commented on the steadily rising level of prison overcrowding. 

Among these, the Inspector of Prisons, Mark Kelly, was quoted in this newspaper last week as describing the current situation as “deplorable” and adding that he has been “sounding the alarm” about this since his appointment in August 2022. 

Mr Kelly also said that “an undesirable uptick in physical violence in prisons is the inevitable result of confining too many adults in too little space for too long".

As a society, we should not expect any good to come from such conditions, which crowd people who have done bad things with others who have done harm and expect anything other than that they will emerge from prison even worse than when they entered it. 

In May of this year, the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (the CPT) visited a number of Ireland’s prisons. 

While the CPT’s report has yet to be published, they have acknowledged the ‘challenges’ inherent in the high numbers detained, aside from any other findings that may emerge from the CPT’s deliberations.

When I last wrote in this newspaper about this issue, I made some concrete suggestions for change, including that we should:

• Make a political/policy decision to ‘cap’ our prison population at a specified maximum, 
• Take urgent action to implement policy providing for more community-based sentencing and addressing overcrowding
• Prioritise and resource the Probation Service and community-based sanctions, 
• Implement measures to divert those with mental illness and significant mental disorders and addictions away from custody, 
• Address issues associated specifically with pathways into and out of the criminal justice system for women, and 
• Better manage the numbers in custody awaiting trial.

It was probably a vain hope that such actions might be implemented, particularly without a proactive political impetus to do so.  Unfortunately, aside from announcing an extended building programme to deliver more prison places, there appears to be no more imaginative, or effective, political responses in prospect. 

That increasingly punitive and ‘law and order’ narrative, is only likely to harden in the weeks and months ahead, as the next General Election looms.

In the UK, the appointment by new Prime Minister Keir Starmer of James Timpson, who is not an elected politician but a businessman and someone with direct personal experience of helping people in the criminal justice system, as Minister for Prisons, Probation, and Parole, was a surprise for many. 

Mr Timpson, chief executive of Timpson Shoe Repairs, said in a TV interview earlier this year that the UK is “addicted to sentencing and punishment” and that “we need to take politics out of sentencing.” 

Penal Policy

Ten years ago the British Academy proposed the establishment of a penal policy committee that some reformers have suggested would have ‘insulated penal policy from the short-term political and media pressures which so often prioritise populist initiatives over a principled and sustainable approach.’ 

Our own Penal Policy Review in 2014 proposed that a Penal Policy Consultative Council be established. This would ensure a ‘consistent approach to penal policy’, thereby removing such analysis significantly from the political sphere. 

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That Consultative Council has not been established, while the Government’s response to the prison overcrowding problem has been a prison-building plan. When it comes to prisons, it’s always a case of ‘build it and they will come.’ 

Any new cells will be filled and the prison population, as evidenced repeatedly, will continue to grow. I now suggest prioritising two measures urgently. 

Both are already well-established Government policy and don’t involve building anything: 

• Put in place the long-promised Penal Policy Consultative Council to advise on evidence-based penal policy and recommend policy decisions that are evidence-based, costed and likely to be effective
• Urgently progress and enact the Community Sanctions Bill, the Heads of which were originally published in 2014. 

That new legislation, repeatedly promised but not delivered, would put the work of the Probation Service on a modern legislative footing, improve service delivery standards, and enable legal provision for a range of modern, proportionate, productive, and more effective supervised community sanctions to reduce re-offending and re-integrate offenders in the community, as well as providing better outcomes for all concerned, including victims of crime.

It is perhaps naïve to expect that such measures stand any chance of implementation between now and the upcoming General Election. 

Prisons do have a place in our penal system. Yet, prisons should never be seen as the only — or even the most significant — contributor to reducing offending and keeping us all safer. 

And when prisons are overcrowded and conditions there deteriorate, both for prisoners and staff, prisons become more unstable, criminogenic, and ‘net contributors’ to increasing the dangerousness of those inside, and of increasing their likelihood of offending after their release. 

That is in nobody’s interests, including past, present, and future victims of crime.

• Vivian Geiran is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at TCD School of Social Work and Social Policy; former Director of the Irish Probation Service; and co-author of Probation and Parole in Ireland: Law and Practice.