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In retrospect the estimated cost of maintaining an offender on a community service order
for merely £18 per week provided a very attractive political aspect to the desirability of
using such non-custodial sanctions wherever possible. In the White Paper which
preceded the Oireachtas Debates (Community Service Orders 1981) while administration
costs are anticipated such as extra probation and welfare staff, supervisors, protective
clothing and travel expenses the hidden but real cost of breach procedures and
incarceration of ultimate defaulters on community service were not factored in, to give a
more accurate cost of communityservice (CommunityService Orders 1981 par. 37). This
econometric exercise was finally to be provided by the Comptroller and Auditor General
Report on Value for Money Examination on the Probation Service in January 2004 (C &
AG Report 2004) when the true comparative costs of communityservice orders relative to
incarceration were revealed. Generally, the report found that a community service order
cost thirty-one percent of the cost of the alternative imprisonment, controlling for time to
be served (C & AG Report 2004 p.49). 32
131
If the Auditor General’s estimate is
retrospectively applied to the weekly cost of imprisonment in 1983 the true cost would
have amounted to £131 and not £18 per week as claimed bythe Minister for Justice. This
more sobering figure might have given the nay-sayers in the Dail a greater point of leverage
when discussing the merits of community service as an alternative to custody had such
information been available (Mr Kelly, Mr Gahan, Dr. Woods Dail Debates vol. 342 4 th May
1983).
5. Humanitarian Concerns Limiting the Use of Imprisonment
Besides the pressing policy concerns implicit in the ever increasing prison population, a
number of reports portrayed the typical prison inmate as coming from very specific
neighbourhoods where social deprivation, early school-leaving and drug addiction were
endemic. Typically the average prisoner, identified in later studies, had left school early,
was male and lived at home with his parents or was homeless (Simon Community 1984;
O’Mahony and Gilmore 1981). The use of imprisonment was recognised as the “dust
bin” for society’s problems some of which were otherwise health problems such as
addictions and attenuated mental health issues. The use of the prison to contain such
32 More recently, a value for moneyanalysis of communityservice and the cost of imprisonment was conducted byPetrus Consulting on behalf of the Department of Justice, Equality
andLawReformin which the writer was engagedin a consultative capacityon the supervisoryboard. The report foundthat the average cost of acommunityservice order was €4,295
(a total of 1158 orders were made for 2006). The alternative cost for incarceration when adjusted was €27,478. The report concluded that community service costs approximately
15.6% of the alternative cost of imprisonment. (Petrus VFMReport 2009:72)