Hundreds of Irish juveniles are locked up in conditions of extreme violence, with little access to regular education, medical treatment or exercise, according to a new report on the treatment of children in prisons worldwide.
Prisoners as young as 15 are subjected to full body searches and most inmates have no running water or toilet facilities in their cells, according to the section on Ireland in the report from the French-based human rights group, International Prison Watch.
The report is the result of two years of research into the treatment of child prisoners in 51 countries. Although all except the US have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the report says its safeguards are widely ignored in many countries.
Young prisoners in the State are frequently housed with adults and subjected to physical violence, sexual abuse or gratuitous humiliations. Visits are restricted and alternatives to detention are rare.
In older prisons, such as Arbour Hill, Portlaoise, Limerick, Cork and much of Mountjoy, prisoners use buckets as toilets. In Mountjoy, many of the inmates wrap their excrement in newspaper and throw it out the window, the report claims. Prison officers, assisted by a group of prisoners, then have to clear these papers each morning.
The report criticises the accommodation in St Patrick's Institution and says overcrowding is so bad that some inmates sleep on the floor between beds. The building is rat-infested and fewer than half the cells have running water or toilets.
A spokesman for the Department of Justice last night acknowledged there was serious overcrowding in some prisons. However, he pointed out that older prisons were being renovated and a new remand prison to open in Dublin next year would relieve the worst overcrowding in Mountjoy.
In 1996, 540 people aged under 21 were in Irish jails; almost half were under 18. In the same year, three minors committed suicide in Irish jails.
Violence is endemic in Irish prisons, according to the report. In Mountjoy, prisoners fight each other with sharpened forks and razor blades. Cases of self-mutilation have been reported.
The report also notes that the State has one of the lowest ages of criminal responsibility in the world. A child as young as seven can commit a criminal act in Ireland.
IPW cites the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which defines a child as "every human being below the age of 18 years". The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child should be used "only as a measure of last resort", the convention says.
The organisation has begun a worldwide campaign for higher international standards in the treatment of juvenile prisoners. Governments are being asked to make the imprisonment of juveniles the exception rather than the rule. It is hoped to get one million signatures on a petition which will be presented to the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, in New York.
