Call to remove 17 year olds from St Patrick’s over violence

Calls have been made to remove 17-year-old children from St Patrick’s Institution following the release of figures revealing the scale of violence there.

The Irish Examiner reported yesterday that St Patrick’s was the most violent jail in the State, with far more assaults than adult prisons, including Mountjoy.

Prison Service figures show there were 367 assaults on prisoners by other inmates in St Patrick’s in 2011 — accounting for a third of all such assaults in the entire prison system last year. This is up on 2010, when there were 323 assaults.