Ireland's shrinking prison population

In an article published in this journal twenty years ago, I predicted that if there was a continuation of the law and order agenda that was being pursued at the time, four inter-related developments were likely to follow. These were: (i) ‘a substantial growth in the size of the prison population’
(ii) ‘an increase in sentence lengths for serious crime together with a growing emphasis on community penalties’
(iii) ‘a concentration of disadvantage and criminal victimisation in a small number of geographically well-defined communities, at the same time as society at large becomes safer and more economically secure’
(iv) ‘a hardening of attitudes in society such that the disadvantaged are blamed for their own misfortune’

Over the ensuing decade these bleak predictions were fulfilled. The prison population grew from a daily average of 2,191 (in 1996) to 3,191 (in 2006), an increase of 46 per cent. The number of prisoners committed to prison for terms of ten years or more (including life) jumped from 10 (in 1994) to 38 (in 2006) and the number of offenders placed on probation or given a Community Service Order (CSO) rose from 2,666 (in 1996) to 2,937 (in 2006), an increase of 10 per cent.