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.