New jail will make an annual saving of over €20,000 for each prisoner
Mr Finlay bases his column on the presupposition that the cost of running the new prison development can be calculated by taking the average cost of keeping a prisoner in custody (€83,500 in 2004) and multiplying it by the total capacity of the new prison campus.
On this basis, he reaches the conclusion that the new prison will cost €100 million a year, or a billion euro a decade to run.
Mr Finlay is wrong. The Irish Prison Service does not envisage that the cost per prisoner in the new Thornton Hall prison will be anywhere near the current average cost of keeping a prisoner in Mountjoy — which in 2005 was €100,400. Nor do we envisage that it will cost us the equivalent of the average cost of keeping a prisoner in custody generally, which in 2005 was €90,900.
In fact, the Prison Service estimates that annual savings in excess of €20,000 per prisoner can be generated in the new replacement Mountjoy campus.
The construction of a modern prison facility to replace the Dickensian, antiquated facilities which currently exist in Mountjoy will allow for significant cost savings.
First, the installation of state-of-the-art security features such as electronic locking systems and extensive CCTV will enable reductions to be achieved in operating costs.
Secondly, the construction of the new prison facilities will allow for the introduction, as part of integrated sentence management, of varying security settings for prisoners which will be determined by a detailed security assessment on committal. At present, due to prison design, all prisoners in Mountjoy and St Patrick’s Institution are subject to the same levels of security, regardless of offence. Lower security levels equate to lower staffing levels and thus significant financial savings.
Thirdly, the economies of scale which can be achieved by locating 30% of Ireland’s prison population on a single site with shared facilities such as healthcare, laundry, baking and catering are significant. Reduced support facilities and services will obviously result in reduced cost.
Mr Finlay’s column deals only with cost and totally ignores the positive benefits that the replacement of the current Mountjoy campus on a green field site will bring for prisoners, particularly in terms of rehabilitation.
The new campus will allow us to develop progressive rehabilitative programmes, introduce enhanced educational facilities and single person cells with in-cell sanitation to end the practice of slopping out. The design of the new prison complex will also facilitate a drugs-free prison regime.
Mr Finlay questions whether the new prison will ever see the light of day. I would like to reassure him that the project is on target. Four candidates were recently selected by the Prison Service to tender for the project and it is intended that construction will commence next April.
Caron McCaffrey
Press Officer
Irish Prison Service
Monastery Road
Clondalkin
Dublin 22
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