LAST UPDATE | 27 Apr 2023
THE PRESIDENT OF the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) has called on Minister for Justice Simon Harris to address overcrowding in prisons and claimed that his Department is “ignoring the issue and hoping it goes away”.
POA leader Tony Power has said that overcrowding creates the “perfect atmosphere for the bully to thrive”, and demanded more action from Harris, who will address the organisation’s annual conference in Galway today.
“I am seriously concerned about the levels of overcrowding in our prisons, levels that put both our members and individual prisoners at risk. Regretfully we are back to Pack Em, Stack Em and Rack Em days,” Power stated.
“We once again have single cells doubled up, mattresses on floors, prisoner population going through the roof – and the only solution seems to be the purchase of bunk beds?”
As of last Friday, there were 167 prisoners sleeping on mattresses on floors, half of which were prisoners in Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison.
Power added that the Irish Prison Service increases prison capacity “with the stroke of a pen”, which leaves prison officers to deal with unsafe working conditions and increased smuggling of contraband.
Overcrowding puts pressure on vulnerable prisoners to smuggle drugs or weapons, often leading to serious violence, Power explained.
“Overcrowding provides the perfect atmosphere for the bully to thrive.”
General Secretary of the POA, Karl Dalton, said that assaults on prison officers and prisoner-on-prisoner assaults have doubled in the past two years.
“This increase in prisoner violence has led to an increase in the control and restraint related injuries of prison officers as they try curtail the violence. Injuries to staff have increased from 61 to 100 in the same period, an increase of some 63%, as they try to control the violence.”
Power gave the Dochas Centre, a medium-security facility for women, as an example of the Prison Service continuing “to bury its head in the sand and manipulate the figures”.
The centre was designed to house 85 women when it was built in 1999 before infrastructure was upgraded to accommodate 105 women.
However, as of 19 April of this year there were 170 women in the facility, 162% of its original capacity, Power said.
“You couldn’t make this up, Minister. If we were reading this account in respect of some other European country, we would be asking what are they at? What has gone wrong with their prison service?”
Speaking to reporters at the conference this morning, Harris said:
“I’m here today to tell the prison officers that we’ve been listening to them, that they have been heard and that this week I received government approval to now engage about expanding prison capacity in Ireland.”
“We have identified with the Irish Prison Service four potential projects, one in Castlerea, one in Clover Hill, one in the Midlands Prison and one in Mountjoy that could, over the course of five years, provide 620 additional prison spaces,” he continued.
“Some of this could come on stream as quickly as the end of next year, some will take a little longer. I know this is something that the prison officers have been seeking for quite a period of time and they are right.”
“We live in a country where the population is growing. We live in a country where the Gardaí are becoming more successful at apprehending criminals and also where the Oireachtas is passing laws which will lead in some cases to longer custodial sentences.”
Provisional figures from the Irish Prison Service show there were 7,055 committals to prison last year, an increase of 919 (15%) on 2021 figures (6,136).
Power also criticised Harris’s announcement in February that 24 new judges would be appointed by the end of this year, with a potential for another 20 judges in 2024.
“There is one definite that will come out of all this Minister and that is an increase in the number of people committed to our prisons,” he said.
“The important question that it poses is, where will we put them- because the Department of Justice officials seem to be standing with hands in pockets ignoring the issue and hoping it will just go away?
The former governor of Mountjoy Prison, John Lonergan, told RTÉ’s This Week programme that overcrowding has been an issue for the prison system for decades.
The number of people entering prison had slowed during the Covid-19 pandemic but has since risen, he said.
“The courts are back to normal,” he explained.
“You had a huge number of cases deferred, you had a huge number of people put on bail and the courts weren’t operating to full capacity and the Prison Service itself, because of Covid, was able to release people.”
Lonergan said that he was in favour of diverting people away from prison if they had sentences of less than 12 months, adding that this could be done by providing more resources at community level and for the Probation Service.
Last week, in a response to a parliamentary question from Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy, Harris said there was a daily average of 4,122 people in custody during 2022.
“The Prison Service must accept all prisoners committed by the Courts and as such the Prison Service has no control over the numbers committed to custody at any given time, and the prison system is, of course, subject to peaks and troughs,” he said.
“I can advise that there were 7,043 committals to custody in 2022. This is a 14.8% (910) increase on the number of committals in 2021. Females accounted for 11.5% (807) of all committals, and males for 88.5% (6,236) of all committals.”
The Irish Prison Service has said that it is “working closely with the Department of Justice to ensure a safe working environment for staff and the safety and security of prisoners in our custody”.
A spokesperson added that new accommodation in Limerick Prison has been commissioned for 90 male spaces and 22 additional female cell spaces.
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