The lack of follow-up care for prisoners who usually leave jail "worse off than before they came in" was sharply criticised at the weekend by the governor of Mountjoy Prison, Mr John Lonergan.
He said anybody could end up in prison, and the rest of society should not be so self-righteous towards those who found themselves in custody.
He added that if we could find out why comparatively few women were sent to jail, we might be able to reduce the overall prison population.
Addressing participants in the National Youth Parliament in Waterford, Mr Lonergan said he detected a "huge strand of self-righteousness" in Irish society and a lack of care about the unemployed, long queues for hospital treatment, disadvantaged children and other socially excluded groups.
"There is a lot of social exclusion in Ireland, but most people are not touched by it and are not in touch with social disadvantage," he said.
After-care of prisoners was "appallingly neglected", he told a parliament delegate who asked if the system maintained any contact with prisoners after their release. The answer was "No", said Mr Lonergan.
Before entering prison, a person might have a job, be in a relationship and have accommodation. Upon release, all three might well be gone.
People should be given jobs and accommodation on leaving prison. The message should be that society condemned the crime committed, but not the human being, he said.
He told his 200-strong audience of 16- to 25-year-olds that only about 80 of the State's 2,800 prisoners were women.
"Why is it that so few women end up in prison in comparison to the number of men? Is it because women are better behaved or because we make more excuse for them?
"Certainly it's an issue that should be addressed because if we could get the solution to it we might be able to reduce our overall prison population."
He told delegates about a young woman who told him her story in the women's prison at Mountjoy last year. She was a secondary school student from Newbridge who had "started messing with a few young fellows" in a local chip shop. A window was broken and she was charged with causing malicious damage.
She took £40 with her to court, where she was accompanied by her parents, her brother and her sister, "believing that they would go in, pay the £40, apologise and she would go back to school".
She had been in trouble before, however, and the judge did not accept her explanation. He remanded her in prison for a week.
Mr Lonergan also related the story of another woman prisoner he had met, a 19-year-old heroin addict who had become pregnant. "Most of those months she probably didn't even know she was pregnant. In an addicted state it just didn't matter. Her baby was born two months prematurely and was less than four pounds in weight."
If you were that baby, he said, "your first experience in life is in an incubator, being de-toxed because your mother is an active heroin addict". The mother had described to him her feelings of guilt on seeing her "four-pound baby shaking with the trauma of withdrawal to such an extent the baby was moving down the incubator".
This was the story for hundreds of babies born to heroin-addicted mothers in Ireland every year. They then grew up to be labelled "the low-lifes, the scum and the gurriers" of society. It should be clear that the problem of heroin addiction, which was in a different league to addiction to soft drugs including alcohol, needed to have 100 times more spent on prevention than on cure.
The National Youth Parliament, organised by the National Youth Council and sponsored by Bus Eireann, meets every 18 months to two years. A steering committee elected at yesterday's closing session will lobby the Government and other decision-makers for the implementation of policies adopted over the weekend.
The issues debated included refugees, the Travelling community, Northern Ireland, the media, sexuality, depression, young people's rights, leaving the land, drugs and politics.
