‘Prisoners are human beings... but a big percentage never had a chance in life’

JIM COLLINS jumps up out of his seat as soon as we enter the room.

He comes round to the other side of the long table fronting his own large desk and points up to an overhead photograph of Cork Prison.

“We’ve no proper perimeter wall for the prison,” he says, his finger circling an assortment of odd-shaped buildings and walls.