Sir, – As reported in a recent article ("Minister for Justice: ‘We should have kept prison capacity in line with population increase. We didn’t," Crime, May 1st), Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan makes welcome and encouraging comments on the need to expand community-based sanctions to help address the chronic prison overcrowding crisis.
However, the Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) does not agree with the Minister’s assessment that prison capacity should have increased in line with a growing population. The fact is that according to the latest Central Statistics Office population and migration estimates, the population grew by 16 per cent between 2016 and April 2025.
Yet according to figures for May 1st this year, the prison population has grown by 35.5 per cent since 2016. This indicates population growth alone does not explain, nor drive, the prison overcrowding crisis, and even if prison capacity were increased in line with population growth, the issue of overcrowding would remain.
We’ve known for more than 40 years, since the Whitaker Report was published in 1985, that building more prison spaces inevitably means they will be filled rather than leave breathing room for the prison authorities to maintain and operate at safe levels.
RM Block
We have only to look at the newest prison – Limerick Women’s Prison – to see how this prediction came true within a mere three weeks of its official opening in October 2023. Since then, it has become the most overcrowded prison in the State even with a pilot temporary release scheme in place for some women to serve their sentences in the community. That prison was built with 56 spaces, yet this week it accommodates 99 women, some sleeping on camp beds and nine sleeping on a mattress on the floor.
This means the state-of-the-art facility designed to provide a trauma-informed approach to women in custody cannot operate in the way it was intended.
While investing in more prison spaces may appear to many to be the answer, IPRT’s recently published report From Punishment to Prevention clearly outlines a more progressive and cost-effective approach to reduce the number of people coming into contact with the criminal justice system.
Instead of continuing to pour money into an overstretched criminal justice system or expanding the prison estate, the Government should redirect investment into diversion and non-custodial alternatives. The primary focus must be on investing in people and communities.
Rather than spending €100,000 to imprison an individual for a year, these resources would be far better spent addressing the reasons why that person ended up in a prison cell in the first place, especially when short sentences – which make up the majority of committals to prison – rarely facilitate meaningful change or reduce reoffending.
Prisons are increasingly being used to compensate for failures in other systems, particularly mental healthcare and housing, so instead of building prison spaces we need to build more secure homes and provide a person-centred and responsive healthcare system.
As a country we need to move away from expanding large and outdated institutions and instead focus on investment in evidence-informed and proven solutions to reduce crime and ultimately the prison population and create a system that is both just and humane. – Yours, etc,
Saoirse Brady,
Executive director,
Irish Penal Reform Trust.
