Judge: State has duty of care to prisoners

A DISTRICT Court judge has described as tragic, frightening and embarrassing the state’s failure to provide drug treatment facilities for defendants outside the prison system.

At Athy District Court, Judge Desmond Zaidan used the terms in reference to what he said were the Government’s double standards in mounting security operations on coasts and at airports to keep out drugs, while failing to keep drugs out of prisons.

The state has a duty of care to prisoners, he said, as he imposed consecutive nine-month sentences on Athy native Larry Kinsella, aged 39, of no fixed abode, for two thefts, after he asked to go to prison to get help for a long-standing heroin addiction. Unless the state wants repeat offenders, the judge said, in-house treatment is needed for drug and alcohol addicts whose crime he estimates accounts for half the prison population. “Leave the Midlands prison for serious crime,” he said.

Each district should have a facility with a prison regime that keeps addicts away from drugs and provides access to treatment from a variety of experts, he said, describing alcohol as “a serious drug”.

“On the one hand, the experts are telling us that alcoholism is an illness, yet the state, with all its resources can’t take any steps to address the problem,” he said, adding that people commit serious offences under the influence of alcohol and drugs.

Counselling is essential he said, adding that the current methadone programme “may have benefits but they are limited and it hasn’t worked in Ireland”.

“Methadone just keeps you under control and all hell breaks loose down the road,” he said.

Mr Kinsella was before the court charged with a robbery on Monday night during which it is alleged that he threatened a lone female shop assistant with a syringe as he demanded the contents of the till and stole €110.

Detective Garda Niall Bambrick said Mr Kinsella replied: “I’m sorry. I meant no harm, I was strung out,” when he was charged, and said gardaí get regular calls about Mr Kinsella, who could sometimes be “an intimidating person”.

When the judge proposed remanding him in custody to Cloverhill prison on that charge, Mr Kinsella asked to be sentenced for two other thefts at a hardware store in May, saying he could get help at the Midlands prison.

On hearing that he’d been first convicted at 16, Judge Zaidan said: “It’s so, so wrong, legally and morally. He needs to be punished but he also needs rehab.”

Mr Kinsella should have been “turned around” at 16, “and not at 39 as the father of seven kids”.

The court heard that Mr Kinsella sleeps on a mattress in a derelict shed full of rubbish and has seen his children, aged between two and 17, just once since Christmas.