There is a pressing need for drug counsellors and education programmes to help women prisoners, a Mountjoy prison doctor told the weekend conference in Dublin organised by the Irish Penal Reform Trust (IPRT).
Dr Patricia Carmody said a survey of 100 women sent to prison in 1996 found that 60 were heroin addicts and 34 had attempted to commit suicide. In all, 26 of the prisoners surveyed had had psychiatric admissions in the past, with nine of them having been admitted more than five times. Of the 35 female prisoners who had been tested for HIV, 13 tested positive, while 22 of 36 women tested for Hepatitis C tested positive for that condition. Among the 42 women tested for Hepatitis B, 12 were positive.
Dr Carmody said the design of the new prison building for women at Mountjoy would facilitate drug detoxification and other programmes, because it allowed for the segregation of prisoners.
"There are quite a lot of women who need to be separated from a small group of addicts who can be very domineering and bully other prisoners. The design of the new building will allow us to develop a drug-free unit which is very important for methadone maintenance programmes."
However, to make rehabilitation work, prison medical and counselling staff "need to know when a woman will be released, which is impossible at the moment because of overcrowding and reoffending".
Dr Carmody said there was a need for women prisoners to have more structure to their day and for more education programmes and physical activities. There was also a pressing need for drug counsellors if drug-free units in the new prison were to work.
She said she and her colleagues had made clear what they needed if the new women's prison was to effectively rehabilitate prisoners. "Now we have to see whether we can get what we need from the Department of Justice," she concluded.
Mountjoy Women's Prison has been without a full-time welfare officer since February of this year. The IPRT called at the weekend for the immediate allocation of two probation and welfare officers to the prison and the establishment of a high-support hostel for women leaving prison. They also recommend that all female prisoners in Limerick be transferred to the new women's prison at Mountjoy when completed.
In July 1998, there were 53 women in Mountjoy prison and nine in Limerick, according to the organisers of the conference. An additional 52 women were serving out their sentences on temporary release, according to their figures.
