Drugs in prisons - Protecting prisoners

JUST last month the secretary general of the Department of Justice, Seán Aylward, a former director of the Irish Prison Service, told the Dáil Committee on Public Accounts that drug-free prisons would be impossible in a humane system.

Yesterday Limerick Circuit Court heard that murderer Gary Campion had 73 ready-for-sale bags of heroin in his cell at Limerick prison.

Campion, aged 26, was serving life for murdering night club security manager Brian Fitzgerald in 2002 and awaiting trial for another when he was found with the drugs in his cell on March 1, 2007.

The practices required to make our prisons drug-free might be harsh but surely they would be more humane than allowing drug dealers destroy the already blighted lives of those doing time in our jails.