Prisons cannot cope with female inmates

Ireland's female prison population has trebled since the 1990s, the Irish Prison Service has said.

There are now 120 women in the prison system and female bed spaces are at such a premium that a revolving door system has emerged, with many female inmates being granted unstructured temporary release to make way for new inmates.

The director general of the Irish Prison Service, Mr Seán Aylward, said he is concerned with current trends. "There is a discrepancy between how women and men are being treated within the system and we would always like to see that justice in sentencing is carried out".

Of the 120 women now in prison, between 30 and 40 are on temporary release at any one time. Half of these are on unstructured temporary release.

Mr Aylward said the female prison population had increased as a result of growing urbanisation, collateral damage from the drugs trade, and because more women were becoming involved in very serious crime.

While the women's Dochas Centre at Mountjoy would be enlarged when it is relocated with the existing prison to a new 1,000 bed facility, the Prison Officers Association has warned the new so-called super jail would present its own problems.

The association's deputy general secretary, Mr Eugene Dennehy, said such prisons in the US were so big they were very hard to secure and, in some cases, inmates not staff, effectively ran certain parts of the jails.

He was also critical of the way the prison service has reacted to the growing non-national prison population in Ireland. Staff had never received any training on handling the needs of such prisoners. The inmates were often very isolated and lonely and, in many cases, their dietary needs were not being met.