Batons and body cameras will be given to some prison officers later this year, as violence in the prison service has seen a quantifiable increase due to overcrowding.
Irish Prison Service director general Caron McCaffrey told the annual Prison Officers Association (POA) conference in Co Kilkenny today that its officers will soon receive batons as part of a trial at Cork Prison. It is understood the pilot project will start in July.
Batons have been available since 2018 in the National Violence Reduction Unit, a specialised unit for the most challenging prisoners at Midlands Prison. The roll-out is seen as giving additional support to staff.
“Batons have been drawn twice, but never used,” McCaffrey said.
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“Certainly, we don’t envisage that our staff will be using the batons, but it is an additional piece of equipment that they can use to keep them safe.”
McCaffrey said a recently introduced trial of body cameras in one block of the State’s maximum-security facility in Portlaoise Prison was “very successful”.
The prison service is preparing to “roll out body-worn cameras” in a full prison for the first time later this year, she said. Mountjoy will be the first facility to receive them, around September, following some procurement challenges.
McCaffrey said staff body cameras are planned to be rolled out “right across the estate into next year”, as the equipment has been demonstrated to improve inmates’ behaviour. A secondary benefit is that audio and visual recordings are available should violent incidents occur, which can aid in successful prosecutions, she said.
Incapacitating spray is another measure officers are set to get, but a legislative amendment is required and is expected to be passed by the Oireachtas in the summer. Training in the use of sprays is under way.
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Acute overcrowding continues to be an issue, the conference heard. A total of 5,909 people were imprisoned in the Irish Prison Service as of March 24th despite prisons having capacity for only 4,736 people.
“This represents a shortfall of 1,173 bed spaces,” Peter Redmond, acting POA president, said, noting that overcrowding amounts to a “national scandal” and is contributing to a renewed gang presence in prisons.
“The level of intimidation, violence, availability of contraband, to include drugs, weapons and phones, all increase in an overcrowded environment,” he said.
Officers say this overcrowding is contributing to a sharp increase in violence across prisons. Karl Dalton, the general secretary of the POA, said direct physical assaults on officers increased by 23 per cent in 2025, with a total of 132 such incidents recorded.
In tandem, there were 60 recorded incidents of aggressive and threatening behaviour towards officers – an increase of 161 per cent on the previous year.
The rates of physical violence between inmates is also dramatically higher. The number of physical interventions needed to protect prisoners from each other in 2025 rose by more than a quarter, up 28 per cent to 114 recorded incidents.
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The conference heard those figures do not capture all of the 1,197 prisoner-on-prisoner physical assaults that took place last year.
McCaffrey acknowledged that “violence in prison, and increasing levels of violence in prison, is a byproduct of overcrowding”.
Dalton said “a further contributory factor to assaults and overall violence is the delivery of contraband to our prison exercise yards by drones”, with 384 documented drone drops over the year.
Prison officers feel like the ‘poor relation’, as other security forces, such as the Garda, receive more Government support, the conference heard. They feel the financial resources afforded to prisons are being misallocated, with funding going toward nice-to-haves, instead of building additional wings in prisons to increase capacity.
