Prison Medical Service fails to prevent spread of disease, report states

A confidential report by the Director of the Prison Medical Service has stated the system is failing to prevent the spread of disease, and has failed to provide drug-free services or adequate psychiatric services.

The report by Dr Enda Dooley for 1997 was presented to the Minister for Justice last year and released this week under the Freedom of Information Act to the Irish Penal Reform Trust.

"In the event that the need for extra staff resources in this Directorate, which has been raised formally on a number of previous occasions, remains unanswered I see myself as having no option . . . but to curtail the range of tasks I am able to undertake," Dr Dooley warns in the report.

The report also shows that the cost of pharmaceuticals per prisoner was the highest for women prisoners in Mountjoy, where an average of £523 a year was spent in 1997. Each man in Mountjoy men's prison was prescribed an average of £362 worth of drugs.

In St Patrick's, the juvenile detention unit, an average of £155 for each young offender was being spent on pharmaceuticals a year. Prisoners are regularly prescribed tranquillisers and other prescription drugs to control behaviour.

IRPT director, Dr Ian O'Donnell, said the report suggested services had to be radically overhauled. "The money earmarked for new penal institutions would be better spent on creating decent, rehabilitative regimes."

Dr Dooley expressed concern in the report about the resignation of the "lone pharmacist" assigned to prisons in July 1997. "Inefficiency in the public service recruitment procedure" meant it would be up to seven months later before the post was even advertised. This was "disastrous in terms of the continuity and the maintenance of systems which have been painfully put in place over the preceding years".

On the question of disease control Dr Dooley states: "In my opinion we have failed over recent years, and continue to so fail, to put adequate resources into combating the spread of blood-borne communicable diseases in the prison context."

He recommends the use of oral substitute drugs, such as methadone, better dis-infection facilities, more supervised drug-free units and the "possible availability of condoms where required".

The threat of tuberculosis is an ongoing one, the report states.