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Recently, there has been considerable growth in the prison population of Ireland.
Contents
Authority
In 1925, shortly after the establishment of the Irish Free State, the then Minister for Justice, Kevin O'Higgins, introduced legislation repealing the existing ability of grand juries to appoint visiting committees to Irish prisons. Instead, the authority to appoint the members of prison visiting committees was vested solely in the person of the Minister. Similarly, the management of the Irish prison system passed to the control of the Minister with the dissolution by statutory instrument of the General Prisons Board in 1928. Thus, by this date, both the responsibility and control over the management and oversight of the Irish Prison Service was held within the Minister's department.
This situation remained unchanged until 1999 when the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, John O'Donoghue, established the Irish Prison Service to which was delegated the task of managing the day-to-day running of the prison system. Simultaneously in 1999 a Prisons Authority Interim Board was established and its members were appointed by the Minister in 2000. The purpose of this board was to advise the Director General and directors of the Irish Prison Service on the management of the penal system. In 2002 the retired High Court Judge, Dermot Kinlen, was appointed the state's first Inspector of Irish Prisons. However, none of these new bodies was ever established on a statutory basis despite indications to the contrary. indeed, as recently as January 2011 Dermot Ahern informed the Dáil that:
In 2009 the Irish Prison Service had an annual budget of €379.319 million and it had a staff of 3,568 people.
Prison population rate
The prison population in Ireland per 100,000 inhabitants is just under 94.
Prisons and prison population (number)
There are currently 14 prisons operating in Ireland with a total bed capacity of 4,106 as of 31 December 2009. The daily average number of prisoners in custody in 2009 was 3,881. However, most of these prisons currently operate at or above capacity. On 25 January 2011 the prison population stood at 4,541.
Sentencing
In the year 2009 there were 15,425 committals to Irish prisons which is an increase of 13.8% on 2008 when the equivalent figure was 13,557. 12,339 individuals accounted for all the committals in 2009. 10,865 committals to Irish prisons in 2009 followed sentencing.
Cost of placement
The average cost to incarcerate a person in a prison in 2009 was €77,222. This was a decrease of 16.7% on the 2008 figure when the cost of incarceration was €92,717 on average.
Minors
Formerly, children in Ireland were detained in Industrial Schools or Reformatory Schools. Currently they are detained in institutions called Children Detention Schools. These detention schools are managed by the Irish Youth Justice Service. There are four facilities for the detention of "children", defined as boys under the age of 17 and girls under the age of 18: