The dispensing and control of drugs in prison should be urgently reviewed, a report on prison deaths has recommended.
The National Steering Group on Deaths in Prison has called for additional pharmacists to be appointed in prisons to oversee the control and dispensing of drugs "as a matter of urgency". It also calls for more qualified nurses to be employed in the prison service.
The steering group reported that 56 per cent of deaths in custody between 1990 and 1997 were suicides; 27 per cent of deaths were due to a drug overdose or prisoners choking on their own vomit and some 17 per cent were due to natural causes.
There was a "noticeable increase in recent years" in both the numbers of deaths due to natural causes and drug overdoses, which reflected both the increase in the numbers of older people committed to prison, "particularly for sex offences", and "the large number of prisoners with a background of current or recent opiate abuse".
The group was satisfied there was a "much more active policy in operation to prevent prison deaths in custody" than there was at the beginning of the decade. "Staff saved a considerable number of lives by a combination of good observations and fast reactions when finding a self-injury in progress. These events - unlike a death in custody - rarely if ever attract media attention." The group also reported that the prison population had "increased dramatically" and passed through the system more quickly, making it more difficult for prison staff to develop a quality relationship with those most at risk of suicide. A high-support facility was called for in each closed institution for offenders exhibiting suicidal tendencies and a "special unit to cater for psychiatrically disturbed violent prisoners".
The group was concerned at the amount of time prisoners received with medical officers. "In some institutions, the number of offenders who attended some of the medical officers in the time-span in which the medical officers were in the institution would indicate that each offender received approximately one minute of the medical officer's examination time." It also recommended that the sentence review group "should consider the cases of offenders at an earlier stage in their sentence than the present seven years".
The group suggested that the option of a shared occupancy cell be available to both offenders and management and that portable TVs be installed in some cells in selected prisons as part of a pilot project. This might address "the boredom and loneliness factors in being locked up in a single cell for 14 hours a day".
The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, welcomed the recommendations and said he hoped "in conjunction with the group to be in a position to follow up on them as soon as possible".
A departmental statement acknowledged that overcrowding in prisons was hindering progress in the development of drug-free areas. It said the situation would improve when the new remand prison at Cloverhill, the new midlands prison and the women's prison in Mountjoy were completed.
