Judge calls for juvenile prison to be destroyed

Inspector of Prisons Mr Justice Dermot Kinlen said the Minister for Justice and the Oireachtas "should be ashamed" of St Patrick's Institution and he urged that the juvenile prison be "destroyed immediately".

He made the comments in his third annual report released yesterday. As revealed by The Irish Times last month, Mr Justice Kinlen's report also called for the trial privatisation of a prison to see if privatisation could work.

If the trial is successful, then the Irish Prison Service should have to compete with private companies for the renewal of prison contracts every five years, he said.

Mr Justice Kinlen said: "There is no doubt that the private prison, if it is efficiently run, costs less than state prisons."

His report points out that the best prison in England, according to the home office, is a privately run one.

His report is scathing of prison conditions and said "the reality is that for most prisoners, prison does not work". Mr Justice Kinlen said judges should not send people to prison "save as a very last resort".

He reserved his greatest criticism for St Patrick's Institution, saying the imprisonment of juveniles in that facility "almost certainly ensures that they will graduate to Mountjoy Prison within a short time of their release.

"The Minister and the Oireachtas should be ashamed of treating our young citizens in this way which ensures they will never be rehabilitated."

Leaving young men locked up for 17 or 18 hours a day with nothing to do is "a recipe for disaster", he said. "It certainly does nothing to rehabilitate them."

Mr Justice Kinlen said St Patrick's Institution should be transferred to the Department of Education and should be run so that prisoners spent the minimum time in their cells "and the rest of the time in fresh air, exercise and serious and prolonged rehabilitative education and work".

Workshops should be put in place immediately and remand prisoners should be kept separate from convicted inmates.

The cost of prisons is "astronomical" but very little is being spent on probation services, he said. He proposed alternative punishments such as deducting fines from wages or social welfare, or imprisoning people at weekends while allowing them to work during the week.

He said the Probation and Welfare Service should be removed from the Irish Prison Service and should be encouraged to provide feasible alternatives to prison.

He suggested that an agency such as the Smurfit Business School look at the cost of running prisons and the apparent overlap in bureaucracy between the Department of Justice and the Irish Prison Service. Mr Justice Kinlen also called for the appointment of an independent lawyer as a Prisoners' Ombudsman and said this person should not come from the public service.

He recommended that the training unit in the Mountjoy complex should be relocated in Dublin city centre when the prison moves to Thornton in north Dublin. He said that one-third of the training unit inmates were attending courses or worked in Dublin.

"Thornton Hall is unsuitable for such prisoners as it is too far away from where they are employed. It is not near frequent bus, Luas or Dart services."

Mr Justice Kinlen described Cork Prison as "a disaster" with "gross overcrowding" and "appalling conditions".

Responding to the report, a spokesman for the Minister for Justice said it was not "practicable" to close St Patrick's Institution immediately, but said it would be replaced by a "state-of-the-art" detention facility in Thornton.