A new report has found that Ireland may be sending victims of slavery to prison, rather than helping to free them.

The project found evidence that vulnerable people may have been trafficked into Ireland and forced to work in cannabis growhouses – some of whom then end up in the criminal justice system.

It also found that Ireland sends more people of Asian origin to jail for cannabis growing than Irish people.

Courts and criminal authorities are not taking into account that the people may be modern-day slaves, the report found.

“People have been found malnourished and terrified in houses locked from the outside, yet they were still treated as criminals and given heavy prison sentences,” said Virginija Petrauskaite of the Migrant Rights Centre, which carried out the study.

There has been a major increase in the amount of cannabis grown in Ireland in recent years, with a subsequent rise in garda crack-downs on the operations.

The study found that of the 50 people jailed for cannabis cultivating last year, 36 of them were of Asian origin.