Minister for Justice and Equality, Charlie Flanagan has announced the allocation of €300,000 in funding to social enterprises providing employment opportunities for people with a criminal past.

More than €300,000 was spent by the State on takeaway meals for prisoners in garda custody last year.

Burma's president Win Myint has granted amnesty to more than 8,500 prisoners.

The number of people being sent to prison plummeted by almost 40% in 2017 — attributed to a massive drop in fine defaulters being jailed.

The loans were for a variety of purposes, including the purchase of games consoles and stereos, and for the cost of communions and confirmations.

An inmate who was decapitated was among six who died at a jail in northern Brazil where riots killed dozens of prisoners earlier this year.

Two Mountjoy prisoners have been taken to hospital following a stabbing incident.

Turkey has issued a decree that will pave the way for the conditional release of some 38,000 prisoners in an apparent move to reduce its jail population to make space for coup plotters.

An international research team has pinpointed the location of a legendary tunnel that Jewish prisoners secretly dug out with spoons to try to escape their Nazi captors during the Second World War

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has agreed to consider alternative locations for a step-down facility to house female ex-prisoners as the first choice site has provoked controversy being in the vicinity of no less than eight schools.

The Cork Civic Trust is poised to make an offer to buy a State-owned city property earmarked for a controversial step-down facility for ex-prisoners.

Since 2014 the Irish Prison Service has bought 2,505 televisions for inmates at a cost of over €440,000.

The doors have been closed on the old Cork Prison for the last time today.

More than 13,000 prison offenders have been placed in employment, education or training over the last 15 years with the help of the Irish Association for the Social Integration of Offenders.

People aged 18-24 account for a quarter of all people committed to prison — and more than two thirds of them reoffend after release, according to a report.