McDowell announces Kinlen as first statutory Inspector of Prisons

OUTSPOKEN Mr Justice Dermot Kinlen is to be the country’s first statutory Inspector of Prisons.

For a number of years he has publicly lashed Justice Minister Michael McDowell and officials over prison policy and in his fourth prisons report last August, he went so far as to term the attitude of Mr McDowell and his officials “fascist”.

He criticised conditions at a number of prisons and said the State was denying prisoners their human rights and he characterised St Patrick’s institution for young offenders as no more than “a training ground for criminality”.