Prison has no treatment programme for more than 20 sex offenders

A MIDLANDS prison has more than 20 sex offenders, but has no treatment programme for them.

A report by the Inspector of Prisons said the sex offenders could only avail of therapeutic treatment in a Dublin prison.

Mr Justice Dermot Kinlen’s report said there were 21 rapists and other sex offenders in Castlerea Prison, Co Roscommon.

He said they accounted for the single biggest category of offenders in the jail.

“It is a pity that there are no sex offenders’ programmes and that they have to depend on Arbour Hill prison to get on such a programme,” his report said.

He said there was no psychologist working in the prison, a situation he described as “disappointing”.

He said while the prison was “well managed” there were 226 prisoners accommodated in a jail built for 136 people.

He said there were 42 remand prisoners in Castlerea awaiting trial, even though there was only space for 20 such inmates. He said a remand section under construction would help address the problem.

Mr Justice Kinlen said there was one prisoner in the special care unit, who had made at least three recent efforts to kill himself.

“It is clear that prison is not improving him in any way and may in fact be extremely detrimental to his future.”

He said the new annualised hours system — which was brought in to replace the overtime system — appeared to be working well and previous industrial relations problems in the jail seem to have diminished.

Mr Kinlen also congratulated the prison authorities for introducing a local sentence management project.

This involved a mentoring service in which two civilian mentors worked with a group of 15 inmates. They provided one-to-one personal mentoring and support before and after release and looked at issues like work training, education, housing benefits, re-offending and addiction problems.