Prison costs - System not giving value for money

It costs many times the average industrial wage to keep one prisoner in jail for a year - just how much depends on where they are incarcerated.

It cost €232,000 to keep one prisoner in Portlaoise jail for the year 2003. This was more than €635 a day, which was more than twice as expensive as the second most costly prison, Mountjoy jail, where it costs €97,900 per year per prisoner, or a little over €268 per day.

Prison overtime has been a controversial aspect of the expenditure in recent years. Overtime cost €214 million last year. This was more than two-thirds of the prison service’s €300m annual budget.

Why is there so much overtime when the ratio of prison guards to prisoners in this country is higher than in either Britain or France?

Justice Minister Michael McDowell claims he reversed significantly the inflationary trend in prison overtime. He argues that the prison service in this country operates a “humane” regime providing a high level of out-of-cell time as well as access to education, work training, health and psychological services.

Fine Gael’s justice spokesman Jim O’Keeffe has questioned the cost-effectiveness of the Prison Service. Even in ‘Rip-off Ireland’ people could have full board in our best hotels for less than it costs to keep a prisoner in Portlaoise.

If this was the price of rehabilitation it might make some sense, but the reality is that people incarcerated in our prisons are more likely to leave with stronger criminal inclinations. Many actually emerge with drug habits acquired in prison.

For years, we had people in mental institutions who belonged in nursing homes, people in jail who belonged in mental institutions and people terrorising the streets who belonged in jail.

According to the Prison Service statistics, 84% of those under sentence in 2003 were committed to Irish prisons for non-violent offences. This amounted to more than 4,400 of the 5,314 people sentenced to prison that year. Is this part of a vicious circle of incompetence or just bureaucratic indifference? There were two different programmes for sex offenders in our prisons in 2003.

Eight people availed of the programme at Arbour Hill prison, but not one sex offender enrolled at the Curragh Place of Detention, where most inmates were sex offenders.

The low take-up is said to be a cause of concern, but little was done to get sex offenders to enrol. Various explanations have been put forward for their unwillingness, like the lack of sufficient personal motivation, or the lack of incentives for participation, such as possible early supervised release for successfully completing the sex offender’s programme.

Too often our prisons cultivate criminality and promote drug abuse. If we are to get value for money, the prison system should be trying to rectify problems, instead of being content with merely containing them.