New moves to end prison overcrowding

Prisoners in Ireland will no longer be forced into overcrowded prisons and subjected to the daily humiliation of 'slopping out', under new proposals announced today.

Justice Minister John O’Donoghue told prison service representatives that a new building programme for the prisons would bring conditions up-to-date.

Launching the Prison Service Strategy Statement, the minister announced new plans for treating incarcerated drug addicts and sex offenders and promised new laws to make the service almost fully independent.

But prison reform campaigners said the moves did not go far enough, adding that new buildings were making conditions worse in some institutions.

At the launch in Dublin Castle, Mr O’Donoghue said: "I am very pleased to note that the Prison Building Programme... will continue with an emphasis on eliminating overcrowding and providing prisoners with accommodation which meets present-day living and sanitary standards."

He said every closed prison would have a drug-free area by the end of 2003 to help prevent inmates being tempted back into addiction.

And he said a treatment programme will be launched next year to treat sex offenders, who make up 14% of the prison population - higher than the international average of 10%.

"I look forward to its development as a successful intervention in the interest, both of those who receive treatment and the misfortunate people in the community who are victims of paedophilia and sexual offences," Mr O’Donoghue said.

The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform is seeking government approval for a General Scheme of a Prisons Authority Bill which will put the Prisons Authority Board and the independent Prison Service on a statutory footing.

The Penal Reform Trust said the plans for drug and sex offender treatment were welcome, but did not go far enough.

Trust board member Brian Harvey said: "We would not welcome the minister’s comments about the Prison Building Programme. The notion that new prisons provide better standards is not factually based."

He explained that the trust did a study at the new Cloverhill remand prison in Dublin in 1999 and found that three prisoners were being held in spaces of 11sq metres.

"If this is the basis for new prison buildings then that clearly does not provide better standards," he said.

But welcoming the move for greater independence in the service, he said: "Any steps towards greater transparency of the system we would welcome as it would make the service more accountable.

He added: "We have been pressing for drug and sex offender treatment for a long time. The measures outlined in this speech go in the right direction but there is still a lot more that needs to be done."