Overcrowding a major factor in prison violence
According to the Prison Chaplains’ annual report, jails are struggling to cope with the large number of prisoners under their watch.
The situation has resulted in facilities like Mountjoy and Limerick prison no longer being considered safe for staff or inmates.
In 2006, Ireland’s prison population stood at 3,191.
However, in the intervening four years it has almost doubled to 5,456 — 1,000 of whom are either on early release or “unlawfully at large” — with predictions that it will break the 6,000 mark next year.
The annual report has raised concerns over most prisons. However, it has warned that serious overcrowding problems exist in Mountjoy, Cork, Wheatfield and the Dóchas Women’s prison.
While Mountjoy has an official prisoner capacity of 489, and the Inspector of Prisons has stated it cannot safely accommodate more than 540 people — but due to a policy of putting bunk beds in single cells it has a “bed capacity” of 630.
On July 30 it held 759 prisoners, meaning 129 did not even have a bed in which to sleep.
A similar situation has occurred in almost all other facilities, with a 75-year-old man being forced to sleep on a mattress on the floor of his cell at Wheatfield Prison in Dublin on July 30 due to a lack of space.
The Prison Chaplains’ report has warned that this situation is one of the key causes of a rise in violence and drug addiction among prisoners.
In some jails, it said, half of inmates tested positive for heroin in 2009, while one-in-three of the total prison population tested positive for heroin, cocaine or cannabis during the same period.
The document also noted that in December last year 20% of Ireland’s prison population (972 people) had to be locked up alone for 23 hours a day to protect them from other prisoners — 150 more than a year earlier.
Younger prisoners have also joined gangs to protect themselves from this violence, but then struggle to escape the gang culture when they are released from jail.
