‘Prisoner death record-keeping misleading’

The concerns of a prison whistleblower, revealed this week in the Irish Examiner, were not the first words of caution about the handling of inmates’ deaths.

Earlier this year, this newspaper published our analysis of reports compiled by the office of the Inspector of Prisons and found that more than two-thirds of investigations into the deaths of vulnerable prisoners since 2012 have raised concerns.

The Prisons Inspectors found that there had been cases of “misleading” or inaccurate record-keeping by prison staff, and questioned the care afforded to inmates who have suicidal ideation and mental health problems.

A reading of the reports shows repeated examples of the records kept on the date of a prisoner’s death in custody being incomplete or inaccurate.

In some cases, log books stating that special observation, or “special obs”, inmates were checked every 15 minutes, as per protocols, were proven to be not true, when the inspector reviewed CCTV footage of the time in question.

The Prison Inspector has been tasked with preparing individual reports on prisoner deaths since 2012, and, in that year, the inspector’s office made its first finding of incorrect record-keeping, in the death of a prisoner in Mountjoy.

Since then, 89 such files have been published and, of those, the reports into 12 deaths have raised concerns about deficiencies in the record-keeping and the checking of prisoners.

These deaths occurred in prisons across the country: Cork, Limerick, Portlaoise, Cloverhill, and Wheatfield.

Eleven of the 12 cases involved a vulnerable prisoner who was on special observation at the time of their death.

In total, the Prison Inspector has published reports into the deaths of 15 special observation prisoners since 2012.

The Prison Inspector’s Office has repeatedly raised the issue over the last five years, in both its annual reports and in individual reports into the deaths of prisoners in custody.

In his 2013/2014 annual report, the late Judge Michael Reilly noted how one prison officer said that, during training, staff are told that when it comes to report-writing, they are to “keep it short and cover your arse”.

One example of worrying record-keeping arose earlier this year, when the then-Prisons Inspector, Helen Casey, published a report on the death of ‘Prisoner A’ on January 3, 2017, in Cork Prison.

Her review of CCTV footage found that on the night he died, the prisoner — a 52-year-old married father, serving a six-month term — was left unchecked for more than the standard 15 minutes on six occasions, including one period that lasted one hour and 42 minutes.

The records, however, stated that he had been checked every 15 minutes.

She noted that the records provided by Cork Prison “are misleading in content” and she would have accepted staff had complied with protocols, “but for the CCTV footage viewed”.

“Incomplete and inaccurate record-keeping regularly feature as a finding in reports from this office,” said Ms Casey.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner in August, Deirdre Malone, executive director of the Irish Penal Reform Trust, said there is a need to establish whether the issue is due to a lack of staffing in Irish prisons and “whether or not there is a culture or practice of obfuscating the truth”.

“The outcomes of these cases are the most serious of the most serious type,” she said. These are deaths in custody; people have lost their lives in custody.

“There is no option when you’re on special obs. There is no other option to contact a family member, there is no option to ring an ambulance yourself, there is no option to ring a friend.”

“You are entirely dependent on other people, namely officers, to look after you and when they don’t do that or when they don’t do their checks, the consequences can be of the most serious type, which they were in these cases.”

At the time, a spokesperson for Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan said he “pays careful attention to reports from the Inspector of Prisons in relation to all deaths in custody and, where deficiencies have been addressed by the Inspector of Prisons, the minister has received proposals to remedy these deficiencies from the director of the Irish Prison Service”.

However, the Department of Justice and the Irish Prison Service refused to reveal what, if any, disciplinary action has been taken against prison staff who filed misleading reports on the deaths of vulnerable inmates.