Madam, - Recently the Law Society of Ireland wisely organised a tour for its students to visit Mountjoy and Dóchas prisons. While the difference in standards between the two jails has been well charted, we may not have fully considered the future social effects of the grossly inadequate facilities at Mountjoy.
The place has an overwhelming sense of foreboding and violence - violence past, violence present (to the self, to staff or to other inmates), and the inescapable sense of violence yet to come. What else is there to do, when 18 of every 24 hours are spent in the company of an, often shared, chamber pot but to inject drugs, self-mutilate and foster aggression? Why should inmates have any respect for a society that allows the perpetuation of this debasement? It is irrational to think that on release from Mountjoy someone would not continue to offend society's code of conduct having himself been so offended by society.
I understand that there are some simply dangerous and disturbed people that are a genuine threat to society and need to be imprisoned. I also understand that there are others who have effectively been socialised into lawlessness and its consequences.
Yet no matter what heinous crime a person may have been committed, there is no justification for the conditions in Mountjoy. They are an abuse of society's right to police itself and an abuse of the rights of the people who stay there.
Whether the atmosphere is created, or perhaps reinforced, by the physical environs of the prison is beyond the ken of this writer. I do know, however, that it is not in our rational self-interest to allow the cycle of humiliation to continue. - Yours, etc.,
JENNIFER CARROLL, Winton Avenue, Rathgar, Dublin 6.