Mistakes made in three per cent of inmate sentencing calculations

The Irish Prison Service (IPS) commissioned a Sentence Calculation Review Programme, which has revealed the mistakes in the period of detention of 46 inmates.

The review was undertaken by a retired prison governor between June and October last year and looked at files on more than 1,600 prisoners in 11 prisons.

Detention periods were incorrectly calculated in 46 of 1,612 prisoner files, about 2.8 per cent of the total cases reviewed.

The IPS did not state whether the errors pertained to the early or late release of prisoners or the extent of the miscalculation of sentence periods.

But an IPS spokesperson said that all errors had been detected before the relevant inmates were to be released from custody and that their files had been corrected.

“No prisoner was let out in error,” he added.

IPS director general, Caron McCaffrey, said earlier this year that the IPS faced a large number of claims relating to the unlawful detention of prisoners.

“It is important that we do not keep someone past his or her sentence expiration date,” Ms McCaffrey said.

She said that the issue of sentence calculation was “complicated and technical in nature”.