Local hospital refuses to assess inmates

PRISONERS at a midlands prison have to travel more than 50 miles for psychiatric assessment because the local hospital will not treat them.

The practice has come in for severe criticism from the Inspector of Prisons and Places of Detention, according to a report in Medicine Weekly.

In his first annual report for 2002-2003, Dermot Kinlen said it was “bureaucratic nonsense” to refer prisoners to the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum, Co Dublin, when Portlaoise had its own psychiatric hospital.