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CCTV FOOTAGE FROM Mountjoy Prison shows a prison officer being violently assaulted by prisoners with a brush handle.
The footage features in the third episode of TV3′s series on the prison, The Joy.
It shows a prisoner grabbing the handle of a brush from a cleaner who is sweeping the floor before attacking one of the prison officers.
Another inmate also gets involved by hitting an officer in the head with the brush handle.
Commenting on the incident while observing the altercation on CCTV footage, Chief Officer Niall Swift said: “He [the first prisoner] takes the brush off the cleaner on the landing and immediately goes at staff.
It could have developed, it’s just that other prisoners didn’t get involved even though the first prisoner, that started the whole incident, was calling for other prisoners to get involved. It could have turned very nasty very quick.
The programme also shows blatant drug smuggling between an inmate and their visitor which is captured on CCTV.
Another person can also be seen throwing a parcel of drugs over the prison walls and into the yard, where it is lifted by a prisoner.
One officer looking at the scene on CCTV says the prisoner will most likely, “put [the drugs] up his rear passage. He’ll then take it out later on and distribute it.”
Staff in the Screening Area use everything from X-ray machines to sniffer dogs to try and stem the flow of narcotics into the prison.
The third episode of ‘The Joy’ airs on TV3 Monday night.
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What’s not mentioned in this article is that the boom in the economy is the tech giants rolling into town, for example Amazon in Seattle or Facebook in CA. They ship in workers from all over the world, drive rents up and push residents out onto the streets. Add the rental properties taken off the market by Airbnb and renting becomes impossible for workers on an average industrial wage or lower. Not unlike what is happening here.
@Kate Murphy: So your saying that shipping in people from all over the world causes homelessness?
@Don Shavago: Nope, I´m saying that tech giants taking over a city and bringing in workers drives up rents and causes homelessness. I think you tried to twist my words into some sort of anti-immigration statement? Not my agenda at all. More anti-corporation. For example: Capitol Hill in Seattle has always been an arty, queer, radical neighbourhood. Amazon came in, brought thousands of staff (40,000 currently), and, attracted by cheap rents and a cool, creative vibe, a lot of their staff moved to Capitol Hill. Now, the area has got so many homeless people sleeping rough, many of whom are previous renters in that area. Gentrification targets the most vulnerable in society – those with low incomes, or mental health issues.
We seem to want an american style of goverment, property tax, privitizaton of all services… the downside to this is we all must work harder and longer, people will be left behind.
Our government need to be conscious of every time they increase the cost of living…
@Stephen Cullen: The only way the government is involved in cost of living increases is through tax. So you want tax reduced then?
@Stephen Cullen: sounds like communism
Homeless in southern California is not as bad as in New York or Ireland because of the weather there.
@tom McCormack: you can’t eat sunshine
@Dave O Keeffe: You mean Kelloggs Cornflakes have been lying to us?
@tom McCormack: have you ever been to San Fran….it’s scandalous bad
@tom McCormack: did you miss the bit with hepatitis being a problem that kills you?
@Padraic Burke: San Fran is survivable outside in the winter. Even Vancouver is, which is why so many homeless move there from across Western Canada.
Flooded with homelessness articles for the Irish and just in case we don’t have enough of those, here is one from the other side of the world, ffs give us a break.
Is it a global conspiracy?
Homelessness is worldwide. Listening to irish media and vested interests. I thought it was only an Irish problem caused by Fine Gael.
@Macc Dan: a global issue caused by policies by the likes of FG
Capitalism is such an amazing, roaring success isn’t it?
@Franklin Roosevelt: as opposed to what happened to Venezuela. Sure. Too many people in this world. Some have gotta be ok right, for the survival of the planet.
Just arrived back from that part of America. Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Unbelievable the amount of homeless people living on the streets, under bridges and any piece of waste ground. Thousands and thousands of them. I have never seen anything like it. Parts of it looks like the jungle in Calais. Absolutely disgusting for supposedly the richest country on Earth. If Trump is going to make America great again he would want to start here and not with his rich buddies.
They should have mentioned the fact that certain offensives means you can’t live near schools. This means when they are released from prison they can only live in the homeless camps.
Wouldn’t surprise me if it was the gov spin unit behind this article. The FG solution to the homeless crisis is to normalize it, then it’s not a crisis anymore! Typical Irish gombeen political solution when they’re not competent enough to actually find a solution.
@Adrian:
There is an article on leinster club football just above this, see if you can get an anti FG rant into that as well..
@P.J. Nolan: I’m a keen rugby fan, former FG voter, and a critic of successive Irish governments’ abject failure to address the housing crisis. As well-run countries like Austria have shown, social housing helps to protect the private market from the disastrous swings in price we have seen in Ireland. The market should serve us, not be our master.
Homelessness is a problem that should be aggressively tackled. In this regard, the US should serve as a warning rather than a good example. We don’t want typhus, a disease associated with the Famine, coming back to Ireland as it has among the homeless in LA. Irish governments seem to have almost given up on social housing. They used to do a decent job at that.
have your say