Reduced budgets have led to a worsening of conditions in prisons since the start of the year, writes Conor Lally
Three months ago the Inspector of Prisons, Mr Justice Dermot Kinlen, said parts of the prison system were failing so spectacularly that a business consultant should be drafted in to help chart the way forward.
Looking through the latest annual reports from the State's 13 prison visiting committees it is difficult to see where a consultant would start.
The reports are drawn up by ministerial-appointed committees who submit them to Minister for Justice Michael McDowell at the end of every year. Some of the complaints contained in the latest batch have been wellventilated in recent years.
A new trend emerging is the impact that a recent cost-cutting campaign, aimed at reducing prison officer overtime, is beginning to have on the quality of our prisons. In fairness to Mr McDowell, when he assumed the justice portfolio he correctly identified runaway prison officer overtime as being in need of urgent attention. The bill had climbed as high as €63 million.
Mr McDowell told the prison officers this was unsustainable. He told them that, if necessary, he would adopt aggressive tactics to reduce spending and that he would not be beaten. He was right. Last year prison officers accepted a pay rise in exchange for working a new system of annualised hours which would effectively end the overtime gravy train. The deal came into effect in January.
But long before a deal was agreed, a range of cost-cutting measures had been put in place to reduce expenditure. It is problems relating to these measures that the latest visiting committee reports detail. While they make for worrying reading in many places, strong anecdotal evidence has emerged in recent months that suggests the new reduced budgets have led to a worsening of conditions since the start of the year. While Mr McDowell was right to tackle the overtime bill, it now seems he won that battle at a heavy price.
Many of the State's jails are overcrowded. After 15 years of unprecedented economic success in Ireland, and with two jails closed, inmates are still sleeping on mattresses on cell floors, not to mention slopping out.
Services for the mentally ill are either poor or non-existent. Mountjoy is the biggest methadone clinic in Ireland and yet illicit drugs are freely available there. Bullying and violence is widespread.
Perhaps most worrying is that elements of the system which had previously been seen as jewels in the rehabilitative crown have been closed to save money.
Just two examples of this are the major reduction in library services in Mountjoy and the discontinuation of evening classes for inmates.
This has happened despite study after study in recent years revealing that illiteracy, along with addiction, is the main problem among the prison population. Cannibalising that part of the system that teaches illiterate inmates to read is short sighted in the extreme. It can only serve to fortify recidivism.