Reason squeezed out in debate on overcrowding

OVERCROWDING in Mountjoy jail has been blamed for tension, fights, drug abuse and even deaths among prisoners and now its latest crime seems to be that it squeezed out John Lonergan.

Although the country’s best known prison governor insisted this week that he wasn’t leaving early the post he has held for 26 years in protest at conditions in the Victorian premises, the mathematics suggest otherwise.

Divide 540 (the number of inmates Mountjoy can safely accommodate) by 670 (the number it housed on Tuesday this week and an increasingly typical occupancy rate in recent times) and you end up with a situation where one in every five prisoners shouldn’t be there.