THE GOVERNMENT’S decision in principle to approve the construction of a new 300-cell prison at Thornton Hall in Dublin, capable of accommodating 500 prisoners, is disappointing. Best international practice requires single-cell prison accommodation. Abandonment of that standard at the planning stage offers little hope for the emergence of a transformed Irish prison system. On the other hand, anything would be better than the dangerously overcrowded conditions that currently exist at Mountjoy Jail.
Six months ago, Europe’s leading human rights organisation published a devastating critique of the Irish prison system. It was found to be degrading, inhumane and unsafe. Conditions at Mountjoy and Cork prisons were said to be particularly gruesome.
In view of those findings and the budgetary situation, it is hardly surprising that a departmental review group recommended a scaled-down version of the original 2,200-cell plan for Thornton Hall and that Cork Prison should be closed at the earliest opportunity. It amounted to a short-term response to a long-festering problem. It proposed the establishment of secure open-centre regimes within all new prisons, to encourage inmates to engage with treatment, education and rehabilitation. But the real significance of the review lay in the emphasis it placed on reducing prison numbers and in granting the courts greater powers to impose non-custodial sanctions and, in certain cases, home detention.
Locking people up for relatively minor offences has been popular with the electorate, but it is hugely expensive and largely counter productive. Instead of prison being a punishment of last resort, recent governments pressurised the judiciary and pushed through legislation that led to a 30 per cent increase in inmates over three years. Sixty per cent of prison sentences amounted to one year or less. With detention centres bursting at the seams, conditions deteriorated and became more dangerous for inmates and staff.
The Thornton Hall project was conceived six years ago to replace Victorian-era structures with modern, single-cell accommodation and deal with overcrowding. It has been all downhill since then. Prison numbers rose and conditions worsened. A scaled-down version of the project has been given conditional approval, but funding will only be provided when capital investment projects are prioritised by the Government in the autumn. In the meantime, work should go ahead on legislative changes designed to reduce prison numbers.