Rhetoric will inevitably increase as a “tough on crime” arms race will ensue between the three largest parties, with Independents upping the ante from local townhall meetings. At the very least, politicians need to stop identifying population growth as a predictor of future prison capacity. Maybe, instead of motioning to the public that their hands are tied, an honest response is that they want to put more people in prison for longer.

This article, by Fr Peter McVerry SJ, originally appeared Reality magazine in 2016. Eight years on and it is as relevant as it ever was. This week Ireland was told to shore up corporate tax laws to prevent wealthy from committing tax fraud and evasion. At the same time, we are rapidly expanding our prison… Read more »

Fast forward five years, what are the CPT likely to find in relation to overcrowding when they visit Ireland later in 2024? In April last year, there were almost 200 prisoners on mattresses on floors, five times what the CPT experts found in 2019. During the summer, the Inspector of Prisons wrote specifically to the Minister for Justice in relation to these “degrading conditions” as mattresses were adjacent to toilets. By any criteria of inspection, the experience of imprisonment by many will have greatly deteriorated in the interim period.

The new prison testifies to a societal failure … [w]e have an obligation to provide something better than a brighter prison.

If a climate of fear dominates most public discussion of drug policy, it is often associated with, or justified, by a climate of moral disapproval – drugs are bad, therefore we must eliminate them, we cannot be seen to tolerate them in any way. The war on drugs must continue and any dissenting voices must be suppressed.  

Causing the death of a pedestrian or cyclist will continue to be treated as manslaughter but the statutory response to careless and dangerous driving resulting in serious injury is not served by meagre fines for motorists who do not even have a driving ban imposed. Lifetime driving disqualifications must be on the table of sanctions as a driver who has caused injury has visibly demonstrated an inability to safely operate a motor vehicle

Considering how we begin to end violence in society, Allegra McLeod, from University of Chicago, urges us to “expand our understanding of violence beyond individualized disorder and the immediate scene of interpersonal harm” and unearth its political and economic roots. This can be difficult when a victim has experienced extreme violence and long-lasting harm. But the ambition of criminal justice systems should be the tempering of violence in society and not just meting out more violence in response to the initial offense. Louk Hulsman, a Dutch criminologist, warns that we create a counter-reality when we only understand an individual in the context of their offense, completely isolated from “his environment, his friends, his family, the material substratum of his world.”

Placing the State’s current programme of prison expansion alongside a historical understanding of penal reform or a more contemporary understanding of penal moderation, it becomes clear that the Irish Government has thrown in the towel on penal reform as it is commonly understood, despite its adoption of advocates’ rhetoric.

Research has shown repeatedly that more prison spaces does not solve overcrowding. Today’s commitment of an additional 620 beds is based on the development of around 400 new cells which is the final nail in the coffin of any ambition for “one prisoner, one cell”. Even the conservative proposal of a cap at 4,000 prisoners is not considered by the Department. We are staring into a future of double-ups, triple-ups and rampant overcrowding.

At the heart of the prison-black-hole phenomenon is a refusal to recognise the humanity of the prisoner. The person in prison ceases being a citizen, a neighbour, a person with a complex narrative that can explain how they ended up where they are. They no longer warrant our empathy. They become faceless and nameless.