Prisons chief calls for privatisation trial

PRIVATE prisons should be tried as an experiment to see if commercial companies could handle inmates more cheaply and efficiently than the Irish Prison Service, according to the Inspector of Prisons.

Inspector Dermot Kinlen said one prison should be privatised on a trial basis and, if the experiment proved successful, the Irish Prison Service (IPS) should be made to compete for five-yearly contracts to run all the prisons and young persons’ places of detention currently under its control.

Mr Justice Kinlen also called for a full-scale independent audit of the prison service to identify wastage in running costs and staffing and to examine the value for money return on its €369m annual budget.