Ministers too keen on prisons, says judge

A SUPREME Court judge yesterday criticised the Government’s willingness to spend “enormous resources” on prisons while failing to fund crime-prevention measures.

Mrs Justice Catherine McGuinness said that district and children’s court judges were “doomed to despair” at the lack of resources given to the Probation Service.

Mrs Justice McGuinness said the Children Act 2001 was an “encouraging instrument of change” aimed at reverting the trend over many years of children ending up in St Patrick’s Institution and subsequently Mountjoy Jail.