Prison isolates inmates on ‘dirty protest’
Three prisoners are involved in the disruption on the D wing, where guards are wearing boiler suits and breathing masks to prevent infection from excrement the prisoners have smeared on cell walls.
The inmates, two from Limerick and one from Cork, are all in their late 20s.
It is believed at least one of them took part in the disturbances at the jail last week which saw inmates hurling televisions from their cells.
Demands have not been made to prison governor Jim Collins by the protesting inmates but their actions are reportedly being carried out as a symbolic “two fingers to the system” act, a prison source has said.
Dirty protests came to prominence during the late 1970s when inmates at the H blocks refused to wash, shave or wear clothes, wrapping themselves only in their prison blankets and smearing the walls of their cells with excrement. The prisoners protesting in Cork Prison are fully clothed.
“It’s a traditional way of attempting to disrupt the prison regime. But it’s dealt with in an extremely professional way. All health and safety procedures are rolled out immediately,” explained a source.
Protesters began daubing excrement on the walls of their single cells earlier this week in the punishment wing, which ironically is the only part of the prison to have in-cell sanitation and toilets.
One inmate has since stopped the dirty protest but three are continuing. They include a man serving a life sentence for murder who considers himself an associate of a notorious Limerick crime gang.
Their section of the D wing is now isolated and screened off from the rest of the jail.
Concern has been raised in recent times about overcrowding in Cork Prison, where, regularly, more than 250 inmates are housed in cells for just 150.
Prison sources say the overcrowding also means a lack of places available in the workshops, the computer unit and a fabric shop.
Meanwhile, the Irish Prison Service is still receiving compensation claims for slopping out from present and former prisoners.
Up to 400 claims regarding inmates having to empty their cell pots were lodged with the IPS by March this year. Since then, the lodgement of claims has slowed to a “trickle” at just one every few weeks.
No notice for trials have been served despite at least 40 summonses filed by claimants.
