ONCE AGAIN, a prison visiting committee has drawn attention to the appalling, overcrowded conditions that exist in Irish jails and warns that the lives of inmates and the safety of staff are being put at risk. Drug gangs are having an increasingly dangerous impact on prison life and the authorities appear to be either unable or unwilling to deal effectively with the problem.
Chairman of the Mountjoy prison visiting committee Stephen Langton has been particularly critical of overcrowding and the consequential lock-up for 23-hours a day of a substantial number of prisoners. Moving some prisoners to the high security republican prison at Portlaoise would help, he suggests. In addition, he criticises the closure of Spike Island and the Curragh prisons by government, in advance of the construction of the new Thornton Hall complex in Dublin.
In an interview with our crime correspondent Conor Lally, Mr Langton said that while significant efforts had been made to stem the flow of drugs into prisons, they were still widely available. Drugs were being thrown over prison walls and, he believed, were also being supplied by a small number of prison officers. Given that drugs are at the root of a majority of offences and that some prisoners become addicted in jail, a more effective response is required. Without tough action, the malign influence of drug gangs will grow behind prison walls and the lives of inmates and conscientious officers will be placed in greater jeopardy. As things stand, details of intimidation by gang members and their use of mobile phones to organise shootings and drug deals suggest a system that is teetering on the verge of collapse.
We must abandon the traditional, knee-jerk response of locking people up for minor offences. The Law Reform Commission recommends that only in exceptional cases should a citizen be jailed for debt. Prison chaplains have complained for years about “dumping” psychiatric patients into secure institutions. Alternative, community-based sentences should be expanded, linked to professional counselling, addiction treatments and periods of electronic tagging – as happens in Scandinavia. Adoption of the Norwegian model here could reduce the number of prisoners by up to 60 per cent.
As the effects of recession take hold, the number of drug offences and the incidence of petty crime are likely to increase. We cannot stuff more unfortunate people into already-overcrowded jails. It is time to implement major reforms in a seriously dysfunctional system.