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THE ORGANISATION REPRESENTING prison officers has rejected comments made in a report suggesting some officers are turning a blind eye to the growth of criminal gangs in prison.
The Prison Culture Report published yesterday noted Ireland does not have a clear operational strategy for dealing with criminal gangs in prisons.
“Prisoners who refuse to concede to the demand of gang leaders are put under pressure and may be subject to physical violence. Some individual staff members appear to be at a loss as to how to manage the problems of disorder which result and prefer to turn a blind eye to gang activities, with the victims of violence being transferred to other prisons rather than the perpetrators,” it said.
Speaking to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland today, deputy general secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association, Jim Mitchell, described the comments as “particularly hurtful” and “unbalanced”.
He said the large number of phone, weapon and drug finds in prison cells would not come about if officers were turning a blind eye to gang activity.
However, he said prison staff “aren’t sure exactly how to deal with gang members”.
The difficulty, particularly arises when there’s incidents of violence, that he refers to in his report. The person who actually ordered that be carried out, that person isn’t there, is quite possibly in a different prison, quite possibly in a different set up entirely. This is the problem – the kind of control these people have over the general population.
The report itself points out that there is no clear strategy or meaningful individual assessment of prisoners and their behaviour in order to mark out the gang leaders and troublemakers.
Mitchell said gang leaders should be taken out of the general population and should be detained in a separate institution.
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Jails are like holiday camps in fairness , Skummm don’t fear going into jail…it’s about time a complete overall was taken inside jails, they need to treat prisoners like the way there treated in foreign country’s were there is no shitee taken from prisoners..hard labour all the way not TV,s and playstations in your cell, sure how is that a punishment ????
If you take out the playstations and TVs then the violence will increase. If you lock them down 23 hours a day with nothing then things will get worse.
No it won’t. It will be seen as a deterrent, as it should be, they won’t wanna go back and as a consequence crime will go down. Simple really but know it alls and wannabe academics refuse to see that therefore it won’t change.
Paul. Prison Officers do not make Prison policy. Civil Servants do. Prison Officers on the Floor of our Prisons are not consulted as to what may work best or not. In fact the opposite is the case. Any advice they for offer is mostly ignored by those who deem that they know more than the staff on the front line do.
But it is always easiest to kick those at the bottom of the totem pole.
Then lock them down 24 hours a day. Simple
do you really think its that simple robert?
Robert. Do that and you would be in breach of Irish, European and International Human Rights laws.
Prison in this Country is not about punishment. Its about rehabilitation. They dont seem to be rehabilitating anyone though.
Irish. As the old saying goes “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”.
We can have as many rehabilitation programs as you want but if the inmates are not willing to partake in them they are useless.
No, it’s about punishment – rehabilitation is a different matter entirely.
It is punishment because a Judge and jury has decided that a person has committed a crime, the punishment is the loss of liberty.
You can spend all the money you want on whatever programmes you want – but when a prisoners sentence has expired, for the many, they are going back to the same house, the same area, the same friends, the same problems – it is this that has to be addressed.
Prison isn’t about sorting out society’s problems – it’s prisons that have to deal with the consequences of this.
Increase their jail terms. Permanent solitary confinement. Liberals will probably cry human rights though
. The man is in charge of a team of investigators ,who’s line of investigating is one of prove your innocence, won’t show evidence for complaint to accused officers CCTV,statements etc ( against the country’s constitution) ,fail to inform of a time frame or scale of their investigations ,when questioned as to the rights or employment rights for fair procedures to any investigation,they accuse staff of non-cooperation and been obstructive and when investigations are concluded ,no acknowledgement or statement to say its over . The investigating process has now turned into a very large quango ,making huge amounts of money from the Irish tax payer and not accountable to anyone. And after 5 years not One cat A complaint has be upheld. But we’re all drunk, untrained,unprofessional,cover up ,child beating, clannish,uncaring apes. It says more of the investigators that they are incapable of find something,if in Reillys opinion the jails are in such a bad state. Maybe its time for the public accounts committee to have a look at the millions been spent on these investigations and the judges own position as to it’s value for money and/or need. Prison ombudsman is what is needed for both staff and prisoner.
There’s few things more dysfunctional than an Irish Quango…they ride roughshod over peoples rights and produce teams of useless paper..just to prove they are there!
Reams…
You can’t stop gangs if much of prison population all know each other. We’ve a handful of prisons. We’ve a large traveller prison population, a large Dublin prison population. How can you stop that when you can’t send them to another prison to disperse the gang? All you’ll achieve by splitting up gangs in one large prison and sending smaller cohorts from within that gang to other prisons, is simply have new gangs in other prisons.
As I said last night no Prison System on the planet is Gang Free. For as long as Prisons have existed there have been Prison Gangs and neither the most liberal or oppresive regimes have been able to counter them.
There is no magic solution to this issue. But the Esteemed Judge seems to think there is. He should share it with us and the rest of the worlds Prison Services so they can counter Gang Culture in their prisons.
We could isolate gang leaders but it would be like cutting of the head of a Hydra, two more will take it’s place. And if you choose to isolate do you also refuse to allow them any contact with the outside world? If we were to that this very same Inspector would be condemning us for abusing their Human Rights.
So we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Our hands are shackled by Human Rights legislation and by protocols he introduced, but yet his report condemns us for not being willing to do something.
He also was extremely offensive in his comments when he basically calls all Officers “Alcoholic Masogynist Racists”. He may want to take a long hard look at his previous profession before he casts stones in Prison Officers direction. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if those comments were deemed libelous.
Typical of these kinda reports; ‘Here are the problems as we see them… evidence? Ehhhh well someone told us? Their name? Ah we don’t have to mention that… references? Nah we won’t include those either. Look here’s what will do, we’ll take a load of unproven, unsubstantiated oral reports, throw in our own biased and self serving opinions and add a dash of the latest liberalese! Have a read o’ that and see what a bunch of apes everyone else is!!! What’s that? Solutions? Answers to these problems? Sure we couldn’t be giving ya any of that! We’d be out of a job!!! Sure don’t I know better than anyone else! Amn’t I a judge?! The most noble, most ethical, most grounded and sober profession in the land! Another brandy my good man! We’ve recessed for 2 and half hours on the state’s penny! Ho Ho!’
@ cheney.Your trolling is amongst the worst quality in the world. Inept doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Can we learn from Bangkok? I was going to say the USA but they don’t seem to know what they’re doing too…
Our prison guards are amongst the worst quality in the world. Inept doesn’t even begin to cover it.
You know this because you have worked as a Prison Guard in numerous countries across the world? Or because you have been in jail in Ireland?
Have you missed the constant headlines of a growing drug epidemic in our prisons? And now we’ve gangs taking hold.
they can only be as good as the training they get and the resources needed to carry that out
Prison officers in this country do an outstanding job under extremely challenging conditions.
You’re full it Cheney. Ratio of officers to prisoners is 2 to 500 – tragically understaffed, lack of leadership by management, blind eye turned to this should be the more apt headline,
they work in a dangerous environment, if turning a blind eye now and again makes things easier good for them, they can’t stop gang culture in prisons it’s always going to be there
2-500? That’s an obscenity!!!
Wrath. Tell us with your intimate knowledge of Prison Rules, Criminal Legislation and Human Rights legislation how you would counter the problems that affect not only the Irish Prison Service but every modern Prison Service in the world!!
Share your wealth of Knowledge with those of that are ignorant of this superior way of doing things.
So says there’s 10000 prisoners you telling me there’s only 20 officers working
“Although offering a largely positive assessment of prisoners’ conditions amid ongoing refurbishments to Mountjoy’s D wing, the report on the unit stated that staffing arrangements had reverted back to 2012 levels of two prison officers for every 500 prisoners, a situation which had been described in a previous visiting committee publication as “unsatisfactory”.”
Trying to explain how the entire system operates is complex.
It is a 24/7/365 operation, They run some of the courts (Cloverhill and the CCJ I believe), have an escort corp and even with that staff are taken from prisons to supplement these numbers if they are busy.
There are hospital escorts, prisoners in hospital requiring guards, bakeries, laundries, grounds, stores, administration staff and when you take all of these officers out then you are left with possibly 2,500 staff working on the ground.
You can split that number in two because of the shift-work element (12 hour days and night shifts), leaving you with approximately 1,250 staff around 14 prisons.
4,000 prisoners / 14 prisons = 285 prisoners per prison (averaging it out for clarity)
1,250 staff / 14 prison = 89 prison officers. That’s a ratio of 1 officer for 3.2 prisoners – my calculations are estimates remember.
I hope I clarified this well enough for you birdseye.
There was always a drug epidemic in Irish prisons.
That’s an amazing analysis.!!
Too many chiefs and not enough indians.?
Where you have drug addicts, you have demand, when you have demand, you have desperation, where you have desperation you will have a cohort who will do what they have to do to get drugs.
Unless we put our prisons in greenfield sites, out of the cities, have all court appearances by video conferencing, absolutely no human contact (screened visits) and someone willing to put their hands up another persons anus and have x-rays and MRIs to check prisoners stomachs – you will always have drugs in prisons.
And even with those measures – you will still have drugs – such is the life.
Try to introduce those measures and watch the legal profession rub their hands with glee, watch the Human Rights, prisoner rights groups and of course these committees balk at the very idea.
No, just not enough indians and the indians that are there are overstretched, this problem has been highlighted for years.
A prison is like a reflection of society and if you don’t provide enough resources – then what can the staff do – they have to still do their jobs.
Your an idiot
Wrath of whatever
The officers in prison do the best they can with the resources they have.many officers have put themselves in violent situations when weapons are being used to try to protect prisoners with no regards to there personal safety.where is this in judge Reillys report.there has being very few killings in our prisons despite the fact they are filled with inmates who have carried out horrendous acts of violents.this is down to the good intelligence work of officers and there courage in stressful and dangerous situations.i would bet if the prisoner population was quizzed and were answering honestly they would agree that the majority of officers are doing a good job and help them if they can.ill leave u with one taught try having ur friend and colleague badly assaulted by someone and then you still have to treat this person as if this has never happen while ur colleague is sitting in an A&E ward waiting for treatment.this is the life of a prison officer.
Paddy..I believe that.good work,tough job.
Gang members should be split up and sent to opposite ends of the country, the notion of making it convenient for family visits should not take precedent.
How many ends of the country do you think we have prisons at??
Check out how the Black Dolphin Prison is run in Eastern Russian, fairly easy to prevent gangs forming or being active in prison. The idea that prisons in Ireland are like holiday camps is delusional, people who make such claims clearly have no idea what prison is like or have been to some fairly bad holiday camps.
IrishStoner. Russian prisons are rife with gangs. Look at through tattoos on Russian inmates. Many are gang related.
@Mick Jordon, my point wasn’t in relation to gang members being in prison, obviously there’ll be many gang members in prisons throughout the world, the point was in relation to preventing gangs forming in prison.
Again. Not possible unless you keep someone in Solitary Confinement for the duration of their sentence. And that is where you run smack into Human Rights Legislation. We tried that already here and the courts shot it down.
They Need a few b Smith’s
Loose the keys of their cells with them on the inside…..
Export them to prisons, in China/Russia/NKRP/Thailand etc. and it’ll be cheaper too. They’ll think twice, with that threat?
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