Prisons do not work: report

John Breslin

Former High Court justice Dermot Kinlen, in his report, once again called for his office to be placed on a statutory basis and attached a draft bill to the report for the year ending April 2004.

In his attack on the prison system, Mr Kinlen said: “I am not suggesting prisons should be abolished. However ... I believe prisons on the whole do not work.”

He criticised politicians who advocate more prison places and harsher regimes, He said: “These are the people who have read, or should have read, report after report, study after study, all showing that you can not cut re-offending rates, let alone suicides, if you put more and more prisoners into under-staffed jails designed often 100 years or more ago to hold a fraction of their present number.”

Mr Kinlen, a plain speaking critic of the Irish Prison Service and the Department of Justice, said he believes senior government officials will not like his draft bill as it will offend their basic mantra about power, secrecy, control and security”.

The former judge claimed he received little information from the department or the Prison Service, arguing if his position was made statutory, officials would be forced to co-operate.

While Mr Kinlen is “thrilled” Mountjoy will be replaced, he criticises other elements of the prison service, such as the sex offenders programme, which was criticised as a failure as there was no incentive for inmates to take part.