A couple of months ago I had to attend the Dublin District Court to give reports on two young men in their 20s who attend a daily rehabilitation programme I manage in the Dublin west area for people affected by substance and behavioural addiction. The same judge presided over both cases. The experience left me feeling bewildered and reeling with frustration.

Both of these young men were up for major offences which, under the law, warranted custodial sentences. Both men had been doing well on the rehabilitation programme, which focuses on the behaviours associated with addiction rather than on the substance itself.

Through a structured weekly programme of education, skills-based training and individual key working, it is hoped that participants will learn to benefit from the positive reinforcements of sobriety and ultimately join the workforce and become contributing members of society.

My job in giving evidence was to point out that the individuals in question had indeed put a life of drug addiction and crime behind them and were working towards a better life for themselves and their families. Neither had offended in the time that they had been attending the recovery programme.

It hadn’t been an easy journey to sobriety for either of them. In the first case, a three-year suspended sentence was given. When it came to the second case, two weeks later, a three-year custodial sentence was handed down.

Prisoners in Ireland are 25 times more likely to come from and return to a socioeconomically deprived area. More than 70 per cent of prisoners are unemployed on committal and a similar percentage describe themselves as not having any particular trade or occupation. Low literacy skills are also a problem, with 30 per cent of prisoners who attend the school at Mountjoy Prison able only to sign their own names.

Not the best response

A Presumption Against Imprisonment: Social Order and Social Values, a report published by the British Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences in July 2014, focuses on arguments by leading criminal justice experts in the UK in relation to crime and punishment, and asks why society seems unable to reduce its reliance on imprisonment. One of the six strategies proposed for reducing the prison population is to remove offenders suffering from drug or alcohol addiction.

There is absolutely no logic in removing an individual who has committed an offence from an education or training programme where they are working to remove themselves and their families from the cycle of poverty. Part of the problem is also the fact that it can sometimes take years for offences to come before the courts, as was seen in both the cases I mention.

Rehabilitation programme

In fairness, the judge in question did listen intently to both my reports and provided me with a fair opportunity to present my evidence. But while the justice system seems lately to be taking a more positive view on rehabilitation over punishment in drug-related crime, the argument put forward by the judge in summing up in the second instance was that justice cannot always be about reform and must involve some form of punishment.

In my opinion, punishment does not have to mean spending time behind bars. The consequences for crimes where another person has not been harmed should involve preventative measures and long-term solutions to the issues that ultimately drive drug-related crime, such as poverty, bad housing and lack of educational opportunities.

This emphasis also makes financial sense when you consider that the average cost of imprisonment for a prisoner in 2013 was €65,542, compared with €2,200 for a community service order.

We must learn to operate with a presumption against imprisonment and realise that offenders can be a resource to society in the long term. The young man in the first case I mentioned earlier will start a course in youth work in September. He will ultimately be able to draw on his own experiences and help other young people to avoid a life of drug addiction and crime.

Derek J Byrne lectures in addiction studies and is manager of an addiction rehabilitation centre in Dublin