Level of violence in Irish prisons relatively low

The Director General of the Irish Prison Service has said that in spite of the fact that over half of the country’s inmates are serving sentences for violent crime, the level of violence in Irish prisons is relatively low.

Caron McCaffrey said that while assaults by prisoners on other prisoners has increased by 66%, attacks on staff have reduced.

She was speaking at the Prison Officers Association annual conference, where officers say they want to be allowed carry batons to protect themselves similar to those issued to gardaí.

Ms McCaffrey said that she shares the prison officers concerns about overcrowding in the prisons which are now at a capacity of 109%. She said the service had introduced over 200 additional spaces in the last two years, 170 this year and had also spent an extra €8 million on overtime to ensure they have enough staff on duty.

She described overcrowding as “regrettable” and they had introduced 190 bunk beds to try to get people off mattresses and have been trying to identify locations in prisons such as office space that can be turned into cells.

She said that new extensions will be built at Clover Hill and Castlerea prisons and the first at Castlerea is expected to be completed by 2026.

She also said they were releasing prisoners on temporary release and community return to free up spaces, but stressed that there was a very strict criteria for eligibility and they were cognisant of victims.

The Irish Prison Service Director rejected claims by the prison officers that drones were flying drugs into the prisons on a daily basis. She said in Mountjoy for example, there were two drone flights in the last two months and work was being done to repair the nets.

She said that new technology was being used to help, staff patrol the prison perimeters at night and the yards are checked for drugs before the prisoners are let out for recreation.

The Irish Prison Service is also seeking to install full body scanners in the prisons to check for inmates concealing drugs internally. 40% of inmates in the north have been found to smuggle drugs this way into prisons. At present in this jurisdiction, body scanners are only used for medical purposes.

Ms McCaffrey also accepts that prisons can be violent but says that the levels of violence here are relatively low considering over half of all prisoners are serving sentences for violent crime.

There has been an increase in prisoner-on-prisoner assaults which are up 66%, but assaults on staff reduced to 110 last year, which the Prison Service says is still unacceptable.

However, prison officers are seeking further protection and want to be armed with batons similar to those issued to the gardaí. They say they are not being issued with them because they have been designated as weapons.

However they also point out that prison officers carry batons in certain circumstances, such as on hospital escort duty or while working at the National Violence Reduction Unit where some of the country’s most violent and dangerous prisoners are housed.

“Why is it forbidden to carry a baton at 2.20pm in one part of the jail, but permissible to carry one in another part or in another situation at 2.30pm?” one officer at the conference asked.

Ms McCaffrey also said that she welcomed the decision to set up a review group to examine the potential for building a new prison at Thornton Hall.

She said the Irish Prison Service had to make sure they were “forward planning for the prison population” and that “we have the beds in place when we need them”.

“While there might be systemic issues in the prisons, people are treated with respect and with dignity,” she said.

“We make a huge effort to work with people to deal with the factors that gave rise to their offending so that when they return to their communities they won’t create further victims of crime.”