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I introduced this Bill for two reasons. It gives an alternative sanction to the Courts.
Instead of sending somebody to prison for a crime, if he is over sixteen years of age
he can be sentenced to community service work. That gives the Courts the
flexibility to decide what in many cases might be a more appropriate sentence. In
many cases somebody in employment who is sentenced to prison can be punished
twice for the same crime. As well as being sentenced to prison he can lose his
employment. Community services can be carried out during holiday time and at
week-ends. … There is another benefit here. It is not simply a case of taking the
soft option. FrequentlyJudges faced with the dilemma of a young person doing the
leaving certificate will refrain from putting him into prison because very often there
is not an alternative sanction available.
These are some of the positive advantages of what we are proposing but there are
other advantages to which many Deputies referred. We have a serious problem in
our prisons at present. If somebody is sentenced for a serious crime to five, six or
seven years imprisonment, prison space must be found byletting out somebodywho
is serving a shorter period of imprisonment. This is not paroling prisoners or letting
out prisoners under intensive supervision, this is simply shedding people from the
system to make space for more serious offenders. In 1982 1,200 prisoners were
shed from our prisons without completing their sentences. If we had more prison
space we would not have to shed, but that would involve a colossal building
programme and new prisons cannot be put up overnight...Apart from the positive
advantages of the CommunityService Bill, I am saying that bykeeping people out of
prison and providing the Courts with alternative sanctions, it can reduce this
problem of shedding in the prisons. I stress that I am not talking about letting
people out for good behaviour under the normal rules of parole or of the very
effective scheme of intensive supervision run by the probation and welfare section
of myDepartment, I am talking about people being let out to make room for a more
serious offender who is to be accommodated within the prison system on the dayhe
is sentenced. That is the crunch problem in our prisons, and that is why I have
chosen this measure as the first instalment in a series of alternatives which I hope
will go a long way to combating our present crime-wave. (Dail Eireann, vol. 342,
col. 320-321 4 th May1983, Mr Noonan).
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