THE absence of drug treatment for some prisoners has been criticised by Judge Cyril Kelly at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.
"I find it extraordinary that there doesn't appear to be a drug addiction course for female prisoners in Mountjoy," said Judge Kelly, after he was told a defendant would only be offered physeptone for one week to help her over withdrawal pangs.
He asked the woman's solicitor to write to the prison authorities asking what could be done for the mother of two who wants to get off drugs so she can be reunited with her children.
Defence counsel, Mr Gerry O'Brien, said his client, Lorraine Ormond (28), from Mourne Road, Dublin 12, needed "some type of structure" to help her achieve her incentive of being reunited with her children.
He said she had gone through the physeptone regime before and became drug free but when released by the court she had nowhere to live and finished up in a drug ridden environment.
Judge Kelly agreed that Ormond previously had requested to be sentenced after she had threatened staff at a service station with a syringe when they caught her taking three cans of lemonade.
He imposed an 18 month sentence and directed that the case be put in for mention on November 14th to consider the prison authorities' reply about treatment.
He said he would review her sentence on February 2nd with an updated probation report and results from urine analysis.
"If she is taking positive steps I will try to help her," he said.
He complimented Mr O'Brien for the advice he offered the defendant and his other clients in these cases and said the court had to act in several capacities to try to ensure Ormond and others would not come out of prison as bad as when they went in.
He said she had a tragic background, with a history of abuse by her father from the time she was 10.
She was hepatitis C positive and had found her partner and father of her children dead on the floor with a syringe in his leg in 1994.
He was HIV positive and had died from cardiac arrest.
"She floated around the city from flat to flat with her two children, committed larcenies and is a young woman crying out for help but there are apparently no facilities in the Mountjoy female wing," said Judge Kelly.
The court had been told that male prisoners who were sentenced to more than two years don't get treatment either, and there was no structured treatment course for defendants under 18 in detention.
Garda Mary Boyle told Mr John Whelan, prosecuting, that Ormond was "strung out" when she threatened the staff at the Parnell Service Station with a syringe on January 25th, 1995.
She was released on bail awaiting sentence for that and was given an 11 month sentence at Kilmainham District Court last week for another matter.