Concern over violence in St Patrick’s

The Government should consider shutting down St Patrick’s Institution given growing revelations about violence there, penal reformers have suggested.

The call comes as new figures show there were 367 prisoner-on-prisoner assaults in St Patrick’s in 2011 and a further 48 assaults by inmates on prison staff.

This accounts for a third of all assaults between prisoners in the prison system and 30% of all assaults on staff.

Overall, there were 1,115 inter-prisoner assaults in the system, compared to 770 in 2010, a jump of 45%. In addition, there were 159 sassaults on prison staff, similar to previous years.

The level of violence in St Patrick’s has raised serious concerns, given it houses 16-to-21-year-old males.

“The figures for assaults, both on inmates and on staff, at St Patrick’s Institution are extremely alarming,” said Liam Herrick of the Irish Penal Reform Trust.

Earlier this year, the Irish Examiner reported that 256 weapons were confiscated by staff at St Patrick’s.

Mr Herrick said the Inspector of Prisons had previously said he found “disturbing issues” at St Patrick’s. He said the inspector had submitted his report to Justice Minister Alan Shatter last June. He called on him to publish it and act on its recommendations.

A Prison Service spokesman said “no level” of violence in prisons was acceptable and said every effort was made to limit it.

“While the prison regime is designed to limit the scope of acts of violence, it is not possible to completely eliminate the possibility of such acts in prisons holding a high proportion of violent offenders without introducing a regime that would be unacceptable,” he said.

He said considering there were 1.6 million bed nights last year the number of assaults was “comparatively low”. He said the number of inter-prisoner assaults amounted to an average of three incidents a day among a population of over 4,300.