Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
IRELAND’S PRISON SERVICE is close to reaching its maximum capacity, with some prisons already over-capacity.
The Inspector of Prisons recommended that there should be a maximum of 3,982 prisoners in custody this year. As of 16 November, this figure stood at 3,739, or 94% of the advised total.
A full breakdown of capacity, number in custody and percentage of bed capacity is set out in the below table:
Justice Minister Francis Fitzgerald revealed the figures in the Dáil recently, in response to a parliamentary question from Bernard Durkan.
The average number of prisoners in custody in Ireland has risen in recent years, from 3,321 in 2007 to 4,318 during 2012 – an increase of over 30%.
Likewise, the total number of committals to prison has also risen sharply during the same period, from 11,934 in 2007 to 17,026 in 2012 – an increase of over 43%.
The first significant decrease in prison numbers since 2007 took place in 2013, when there were 15,735 committals to prison – a decrease of 7.6% on the 2012 figure.
Women’s prisons
Fitzgerald said that the Irish Prison Service and Probation Service have developed a strategy which ensures “a more targeted response to women offenders which it is hoped will reduce overcrowding in female prisons”.
These measures include strengthening early intervention measures in the community; exploring the potentials of women-centric alternatives to custody; and developing a suitable step-down facility for women offenders in centres such as the Dochas Centre in Mountjoy.
Fitzgerald noted that a 40-month capital programme is being implemented to eliminate slopping out and to improve prison conditions. Slopping out in Mountjoy Prison will end next year, once refurbishment work is complete.
Construction on a new prison to replace the existing facility in Cork is due to be completed in the third quarter of 2015. Designs are currently being drawn up to redevelop Limerick Prison.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
That was cheap. If we had arranged and paid no doubt it would have been 2.5 million.
$7.9 million overall? Should have led with that!! Great for the Irish economy all the same – they should run another “Gathering” for politicians and Presidents!
And this is a scandal in the States? This happens on a daily basis here! We’re used to it, we’ve come to accept it as the norm!
Judging by the students reactions below her it looks like Malia is letting off some ripper of a fart.
And never have two young girls been so bored in their lives!
I wonder how many people invite guests to their house and total up what it cost to host them when they leave…
That’s 21c of toilet paper
€2.30 of electricity
€6 breakfast
80c milk and a tea bag
€1.50 for that glass you broke……
Don’t worry I don’t expect you to pay this I’m just making sure you and the whole world knows what my hospitality has cost me.
And where did all that money go seeing as Ireland is in such a ‘bad state’ ?
The culchies in the towns where he visited still have their communion money for fecks sake. No chance of that money being recirculated
Damn culchies. Stopping us all from being rich.
The book Animal Farm by George Orewell comes to my mind when I read about Obama admin and their extravagant lifestyles on US tax payers money.
During a recent trip to China the first family and their staff of about 70 stayed in the presidential suite at the Westin Chaoyang Hotel, which USA Today reports costs about $8,400 a night. Clearly the elite live by a different standard and have for a long time. Obama sure knows how to spend taxpayers money.
Yes he does, 100′s of millions on vacations, 4000 calorie state dinners, the best of everything including medical. Meanwhile the little people struggle with multiple part time jobs, poor quality high cost Obama care and young people not being able to find work after college. But he’s on their side right? What a delusion.
It won’t be too long before Obama will introduce in special powers to ban the very books that were written to demonize Soviet Russia. The tables have turned 180° and Now the United States has become the very same totalitarian Communist state.
The trip this week for our little president
To the uk prob will cost us a million
It’s a state visit, the host country pays.
The gathering or the shakedown with guilt of the diaspora as we all knew it to be.
And the book ” One flew over the cuckoos nest” comes to mind when I read some of these comments
Mike ya must be a dub
And the Govt will still tell you how great they are come the next election
have your say