Prison officers say 18 different criminal factions in Mountjoy

There are 18 different criminal factions in Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison, according to the Prison Officers’ Association.

It claims gang members involved in clashes with rivals are returned to the prison population with very few precautions taken to prevent a repeat of the violence.

The association has urged senior managers in the Irish Prison Service to develop better procedures to segregate members of different gangs.

Association president Stephen Delaney said management must look at dispersing gang members throughout prisons nationally if there were too many factions to keep apart in individual facilities.

“It is operationally very difficult, there is no question about that. But we feel there is capacity within the [prison] estate to cater for these people and that they are targeted and isolated for everyone else within the prison system,” he said.

“Whether they are involved in violence, bullying and intimidation or drugs, the prison system needs to be effective in handling these gangland figures.”

‘Savaged’

In a recent case, Mr Delaney said, a prisoner was being “savaged” in an exercise yard of Mountjoy before prison officers intervened. He believed there was a real chance the prisoner would have been killed but for the intervention of the prison officers who rushed in and broke up the fight.

“The evidence [of the attack] was there on CCTV. It was like something you’d see in a movie.”

He said the failure to segregate such prisoners following an attack of this kind created an unsafe environment.

Some criminals were clever and manipulative. They used their cunning and the power derived from being involved in organised crime, inside and outside the prison system, to force other prisoners to smuggle and hold drugs for them, he said.