thebaz wrote: Can someone explain to me how it costs a half a million a year to keep a young offender in a Juvenile detention centre ? Cost per adult prisoner is between 250 and 300 k , which also seams outrageous .
thebaz wrote: Can someone explain to me how it costs a half a million a year to keep a young offender in a Juvenile detention centre ? Top boarding schools in the country are no more than 20 k per pupil !! Maybe theyd be better off sending the young offewnders there instead , where theyd get a proper education as well ! Is it me , or is this more madness , and more milking the overtime by inefficient civil servants !!! Reported throughout yesterdays papers - no link on hand . Cost per adult prisoner is between 250 and 300 k , which also seams outrageous .
MrJoeSoap wrote: Where did you get those figures?
thebaz wrote: As Ressem reminded me , the indo / or unison.ie -- its absolutly staggering - 1,420 a day per prisoner -- Youd get a couple of weeks in the K club for that -- what a waste !
IT costs almost €¼m a year to hold a prisoner in the high-security jail at Portlaoise. The average daily prisoner population in Portlaoise, which houses mainly dissident republican activists or inmates transferred from elsewhere for security reasons, is estimated at 121. Portlaoise tops the financial league for prisoners in custody because of its unique security features. At €240,700 per prisoner, the costs are way ahead of Mountjoy, which is in second place at €100,400, and St Patrick's Institution for young offenders at €90,700. The figures are contained in the latest Irish Prison Service annual report. The cheapest running costs are at Loughan House, Blacklion, Co Cavan - an open centre, which holds an average of 74 male offenders. The cost per prisoner is based on the average daily number of offenders in custody last year and includes actual running costs such as prison officer pay, overtime, food, light, heat and maintenance. Rising The average cost of keeping a prisoner in custody is estimated at €90,900, with rising wage levels mainly responsible for pushing up the figure from the previous year. However, prison officials estimate that annual savings in excess of €20,000 per prisoner can be generated in the new prison campus at Thornton, north Dublin, when it replaces the Mountjoy complex. Officials said the installation of state of the art security features such as electronic locking systems and extensive CCTV would enable reductions to be achieved in operating costs. The new facilities would also allow authorities to carry out detailed security assessments of every prisoner. At present, prison designs mean that all prisoners in Mountjoy and St Patrick's are subject to similar levels of security, regardless of their offence. Lower security levels, officials pointed out, equated to lower staffing numbers and significant financial savings. Costs will also be reduced by locating 30pc of Ireland's prison population on a single site at Thornton with shared facilities such as healthcare, laundry, baking and catering. Capacity The report shows that most prisons operated at or near full capacity during the year. The average daily number of prisoners in custody was 3,151, a slight decrease of 1.5pc on the previous year but the average count of female inmates jumped by 6pc to 103. An average of 5pc of prisoners were allowed out on temporary release, a significant decrease on the previous year. Most of those were on a structured parole programme, often under the direct supervision of the probation and welfare service, while others were set free for compassionate reasons such as ill health or death in the family. There were three jail escapes in 2005, all from the Dochas Centre for female offenders in Mountjoy. Another six offenders escaped from the custody of prison officers while either attending court or receiving medical treatment. A total of 81 prisoners absconded from an open centre or while on accompanied outings with an officer, a prison chaplain or other support services. Forty-nine of those were returned to custody by the end of the year. Tom Brady
MrJoeSoap wrote: <--Silence-->
YOUNG offenders are now each costing the taxpayer more than half-a-million euro every year. The cost of each place in a young-offenders institution has rocketed to €507,470. This shocking figure is to be disclosed in a special report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) when the Dail comes back this week.
doubledown wrote: Bring back chain gangs, I say. Get them to work on the roads.
nesf wrote: It always amuses me when this comes up. If we keep the prisoners in windowless stone cells with straw on the floor to sleep on, the public complains. If we put them in relatively modern prisons, the public complains. We can't win with you people!
luckat wrote: http://www.finglasdetentionschool.ie/childadolescent.htm is the website, by the way. I don't know the centre myself, but one small point: when someone goes to an upper-class boarding school, he usually (usually) doesn't arrive with issues of child abuse, violence in the home, addiction in the home, a peer group centred on criminal activity... oh wait, maybe I'm wrong there... Seriously, though, whatever the faults of upper-class parents, the kids who end up in Finglas come with a packet of big problems to start with. They need a lot of intervention. Half a million now is well worth it if the intervention - psych help, good education, training for education, help with housing and friends and getting on with other people - is going to result in a (relatively) happy, productive, sane member of society. It could be dearer in the end to spend less.
Sleepy wrote: Would we be better in the long run to just put a quick bullet into any current inmates and invest this cash into underprivileged areas/counselling services etc instead?
senordingdong wrote: That's sickening. Apparently in Russia they can hold 10 times for the same cost. I reckon we should send them there. Then they'd really be repenting.
