An international group which monitors the treatment of prisoners is to visit Ireland shortly, and gardai working in immigration have been told to expect a visit, "due to the attention being given to asylum-seekers".
A confidential Garda memo sent to stations gives details of the visit of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT). The committee's visit, expected before the end of the year, is the first to Ireland in five years.
The CPT report from its 1993 visit criticised strongly detention facilities in Garda stations and prisons. The report detailed a collection of non-standard-issue weapons found in one Dublin Garda station and cited medical evidence suggesting that suspects had been mistreated in custody. It concluded that people "held in certain police establishments run a not-inconsiderable risk of being physically ill-treated". The Garda circular warns that the CPT delegation is "authorised to visit on any day and at any time prisons and places of detention including Garda stations and immigration offices".
It says it is "not possible to state what stations will be visited, but the busier stations can expect a visit and also any centre where complaints were made by prisoners since 1993, places visited in 1993 can expect to be revisited and any immigration office due to the attention being given to asylum-seekers at present".
It continues that "this group expect that An Garda Siochana will promote human rights and ensure that all prisoners are treated with courtesy, dignity, respect and with justice, and the group itself will be given the fullest co-operation, courtesy and assistance befitting a group of this status and importance".
During its last visit the CPT visited immigration facilities at Shannon. The facilities at the Wexford port of Rosslare, which have already been described by the Garda as abysmal, are expected to come under scrutiny after international media coverage of Romanians arriving from Cherbourg.
"We notify the visit to the Government and we tell them the dates some weeks before. The only thing I can tell you is that we haven't been yet," the CPT information officer, Mr Patrick Muller, said yesterday.
The committee was set up in 1987 under the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Punishment or Treatment. Despite improvements in the prison system since 1993 the chronic overcrowding in Mountjoy Prison is expected to be the focus of the committee's attention. When it visited the prison five years ago there were 582 male inmates. Since early this year the number has never fallen below 700.
In 1993 the committee criticised the use of cells in the reception area of the prison as "quite unacceptable for other than a short period of time". It said the cells "should never be used to hold inmates overnight". These cells now accommodate up to 30 prisoners overnight on mattresses on the floors, due to overcrowding.
