Irish prison officers are the highest-paid in Europe, mainly due to excessive overtime payments, a report on the prison service shows. However, the staff costs are largely due to structural and management inefficiencies in the system. Irish prison officers have better attendance records and lower sick leave than other comparable prison services.
The Government is to receive proposals to solve the "permanent state of semi-crisis" in the prison service which is due to be passed into the control of an independent Prisons Agency within the next two years.
The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, said yesterday he would be forwarding recommendations to Government shortly to improve management and reduce costs in the service.
The prison system, the report published yesterday shows, is running at between 100 and 120 per cent capacity.
The cost of keeping a prisoner in the State's system is also higher than any other country in Europe with the exception of Northern Ireland, which has the highest levels of top-security paramilitary prisoners.
The report of the Prison Service Operating Cost Review Group shows the annual cost of keeping a prisoner in this State is £43,326. Denmark, the European state with which comparisons are made because of its similar size and population, has an average cost of £23,119 per prisoner.
It points out that high costs in the system are, in large part, to do with the prison culture. The system can operate cheaply "if people are simply warehoused in cells. The Irish prison service operates a relatively liberal regime in spite of the difficulties caused by overcrowding".
The report acknowledges that there is a need for alternatives to custody and says everything should be done to ensure that prison is used "as a last resort and for serious offenders only". It suggests the practice of imprisoning debtors should be discontinued or "the cost charged to the commercial suitor".
It says that Mountjoy Prison is probably unique, certainly in Europe, in terms of the overcrowding and numbers of prisoners sent there. Mountjoy is the State's main committal prison, where prisoners are sent immediately on sentence. It has only 550 places in the male wings but in 1996 6,000 prisoners were sent there on sentence. The report points out that the resultant early release of prisoners is detrimental in terms of causing further crime and also in that it militates against the notion of rehabilitation in prison.