View/Open - CORA - University College Cork

problems was seen as whollyinappropriate, especiallyas the prison conditions deteriorated
with further over-crowding. Deputy Keating identified the negative labelling aspect of
imprisonment in the debate when he said;
“A prison sentence ruins a person …in manycases it is a sentence of death in terms
of a person’s development, fulfilment, career and family” (Dail Debates vol. 341, col.
1358, 20 th April, 1983).
Moreover the premature use of imprisonment in an offender’s career was recognised as
accelerating the offender into the path of criminality, which projection could best be
avoided by diverting the offender away from the learning patterns of prison life (Tuck
1988:5; Sykes: 1958; Lemert: 1951).
However, the use of community service for offenders with addictions was to present as a
significant issue once the community service schemes were established in Ireland.
Community service orders were contra-indicated in community service suitability reports
where the offender had an active addiction as the offender would present a risk to himself
or to co-workers which would not be covered by occupational insurance, a necessary
precondition to the establishment of any community service scheme. So, in reality while
prison may have been considered inappropriate for such offenders, they were almost
automatically excluded from the non-custodial penalty of community service by virtue of
their deemedinstabilitydue to drugmisuse.
6. Deterrence Not Working
The specific deterrent effect of imprisonment was demonstrably not working for the
majority of prisoners as was evidenced by the Report on Prisons and Places of Detention
in 1981, the most recent report available when the Criminal Justice (Community Service)
Bill was debated in the Oireachtas. Fifty Eight per cent of males and 41% of females
sentenced in 1979 had been in prison before. Twenty-five percent of males and eighteen
percent of females had served one to five previous terms. Thirty-four percent of males
and twenty-three percent of females had served five to twentyprevious sentences and nine
to ten percent of both sexes had been “inside” more than twenty times. (MacBride
1982:46-50) The N.E.S.C. Report (1984:160) indicated two thirds of adult males
132