Monday, February 08, 2010
PLEDGES by the Government to remove the scourge of drugs from jails have been ridiculed with figures revealing there were 1,293 drug seizures in prisons last year.
Almost half the drug finds and seizures were made in Mountjoy Prison, the country’s largest jail.
Pressure has increased on the Justice Minister to roll out strict restrictions in jails including no-contact screened visits for known addicts. Fine Gael justice spokesman Charlie Flanagan said a prisoner who enters prison as an addict has no chance of being rehabilitated and will be back inside having reoffended in order to feed the habit.
The figures obtained by the deputy in a parliamentary answer reveal the full breakdown of where drugs were seized.
After seizures in Mountjoy Prison (547), the biggest numbers of drug finds in the year were made in Wheatfield Prison (167), Cloverhill Prison (97), the Midlands Prison (93), St Patrick’s Institution (92) and Limerick Prison (75).
Mr Flanagan said pledges by the former justice minister Michael McDowell to make jails drug-free six years ago, had clearly failed. It was incumbent on the present minister, Dermot Ahern, to tackle the issue.
"If the minister can’t secure our prisons how can we expect him to secure our streets? Contrary to the minister’s assertions that seizures are proof that detection is effective, it proves only that a chronic drug problem exists and that mobile phones are still commonplace behind our prison walls. If there was no problem, there would be no drugs or phones to detect in the first place," he said.
Other figures show large drug seizures made in other jails in 2008 including in Castlerea Prison (65), Mountjoy’s Training Unit (60), Cork Prison (35) and the open jail Shelton Abbey (19).
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