THE Government has failed to enhance public safety by neglecting the probation and supervision of criminals and, particularly, the management of sex offenders, says the union representing probation officers.
While IMPACT agreed there was no alternative to custody for certain offenders, it said a large number, such as petty thieves, could be effectively managed by probation.
Probation also cost the State much less money. While the annual budget for prisons was £100 million, the annual cost of the probation service was £3 million. The 180 probation officers managed some 5,000 offenders a year, about half the number who passed through prison each year.
Commitments by successive ministers for justice to employ more probation officers had also not been met, it was pointed out.
The Probation and Welfare Officers' branch of IMPACT also said that the Government was ignoring advice given in European and Irish reports on the need to expand its probation service.
The IMPACT branch chairwoman, Mrs Jane Keen, said offenders were not being rehabilitated because the service was not well funded.
There are 180 probation officers who are managing 5,000 offenders. There had been no relative increase in the size of the probation service, despite the fact that the number of offenders being managed had doubled in a decade.
Mr Patrick O'Dea, spokesman for the branch, said the Department of Justice should set up and operate a regionalised community-based treatment programme for sex offenders.
"The Department of Justice commitment to rehabilitation must be judged by the degree to which it is prepared to put in place structured rehabilitation programmes. Sadly, these programmes are not available throughout the prison system. The quality and quantity varies enormously, and crucially, may have been without top-down policy and resource support," he said.
The supervision of drug offenders was ineffective so long as there was a medical situation of waiting lists for treatment, he said. "Drug treatment must be available on an accident-and-emergency type of service. For everyone's sake, anything less, by omission, enables crime. These are failed opportunities to enhance public safety."
The union pointed to the Whitaker report into the prison and probation service in 1985, which commented on the fact that there were then only 169 probation officers to service 11 prisons, provide reports when ordered by courts and supervise offenders on temporary release.
The Whitaker report stated: "A progressive strengthening of the service is essential for more effective use of alternatives to imprisonment."
The situation in 1996 was "relatively similar but worse", Mr O'Dea said. The number of offenders being handled had doubled since then but there were now only 180 probation officers, an increase of 11 in a decade.
Last year, Government sources were quoted in some newspapers as saying that an additional 70 probation officers would be employed. IMPACT said nothing had materialised in relation to extra staffing.
The union also said that Government policy on handling offenders was volatile. "Irish penal policy is led more by headlined items than changes of party policy. It is volatile and vulnerable towards more of the prison sanction."
Mr O'Dea referred to a European report which stated that "community sanction and measures properly used and implemented actually work and offer the community, as well as the offenders, much greater hope of reform and rehabilitation than the use of custodial penalties for those whose offences are not serious enough to merit prison".