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.

In his third annual report, Justice Kinlen questioned why there were more prison officers than prisoners in Ireland and why vast sums of money were poured into the expansion of prison places when the re-offending rate, as high as seven out of ten prisoners in some prisons, was not tackled.

“There has to be an independent, detailed and urgent assessment of the huge prison budget,” he said.

“We must progressively get rid of the old idea of power, control and secrecy. That should be replaced totally by openness, transparency, accountability and efficiency.”

Justice Kinlen questioned the “large numbers in administration” in the IPS and criticised its “ever-growing bureaucracy.” He queried why the cost of a prison place varied from €54,000 per year in Loughan House to €250,000 per year in Portlaoise.

“It was explained to me that part of the cost of headquarters is included in all of these figures and one must look at them with some question marks in one’s mind.”

He also queried the need for costly overseas trips by prison officials.

“Efficient businesses in the real world now do consultations by video link.”

He asked for a report on the outcome of the CONNECT prison training programme launched several years ago with a €60m grant from the EU.

It was to have been operating in all prisons by 2003 but was only in place in the Dóchas women’s prison and the Training Unit in Mountjoy and was “sort of starting in Limerick.”

He asked: “What has happened to this money? How was it spent? If not spent, where is it?”

He urged increased use of video link to avoid the cost of bringing all prisoners to every court appearance, and the use of private security firms for the transport of prisoners.

Justice Kinlen also expressed concerns about the decentralisation of the IPS headquarters to Longford, complaining that experienced staff would be lost.

“People from other departments who will want to go to Longford will be moved into the Department of Justice and will thereby be deemed to be experts on prisons,” he said.

Among his demands were that the Prisons Inspectorate be put on a permanent, independent statutory footing and that the Probation and Welfare Service be made a separate body with increased powers and resources.

He also called for the setting up of a Prisoners Ombudsman who, he said, should be a human rights lawyer “who does not come from the public service.”