Irish Examiner view: Ireland could learn from the Netherlands about prison reform

Irish prisons are unsustainably overcrowded while, in the last two decades, the Dutch have shut 20 jails as their prison population fell by 40%

While the authorities in the Netherlands admit they do not have a model prison policy, they have realised prison terms can sometimes do more harm than good. Picture: iStock

There are well-documented failings within the Irish prison system and, in truth, there are similar deficiencies among our many contemporaries across Europe and other western democracies.

If the failings are obvious — overcrowding, increasing prisoner numbers, drug smuggling, prisoner welfare, and so forth — then the solutions seem less so, and the increasing clarion calls for change might well be wasted breath unless alternatives to incarceration are studied and implemented.