A Bansha native who’s former governor of Mount Joy says cutting jail sentences will only tackle prison overcrowding in the short term.
The Department of Justice has been asked to fast track a review that could see prisoners not serving a life sentence entitled to 33%remission instead of 25%.
At present Mount Joy has 48 more prisoners than their capacity , something John says has always been the case.
He told Tipp Today that more spaces just means more prisoners, with the current proposal by the Department only likely to be a temporary solution.
He says there are many alternatives to prison that should be developed to properly address the issue:
“Not much point in putting people to prison for 3 or 4 months, it costs a fortunate and the person himself or herself, but mostly himself because the vast vast number, 97%, of the prison population are men, the vast numbers do contribute nothing to society while they are in prison except cost money. There are lots of alternatives to prison, it is not about letting people off there is already quite successful programme in place with community sanction, and community activity and they work and all that type of alternative to prison can be increased and developed.”
John says that prison should be reserved for people who are danger to society or have committed a violent crime and not for people serving 3 or 4 month sentences and believes the proposed solution is a short term one:
“It will certainly relieve prison numbers in the immediate short term because, people who will get a third remission will be released but in the next 5 or 6 years one third remission again will become the very same as a quarter remission eventually the prison system will fill up again, if there are prison spaces, research shows this the world over, if there are prison spaces they will be filled.”
