A HOMELESS mentally ill woman who was forcibly removed from prison after refusing to take up early release because she had nowhere to go was remanded back to the prison the next day after being arrested trying to break back into the facility.
After refusing to leave the women’s Dóchas Centre in the Mountjoy complex in Dublin she was carried by staff from the facility on to the North Circular Road outside.
“There were pretty tragic scenes,” said one source familiar with the case. “She was very agitated and shouting as they were carrying her out. The staff felt they had been given an order to get the woman out but even they were left traumatised by it.”
In response to queries on the case from The Irish Times, the prison service said: "The director general [Brian Purcell] of the Irish Prison Service has initiated an internal inquiry into all aspects of this case, accordingly it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time."
One staff member gave the woman €20 for a hostel as she was being ejected from the Dóchas Centre. However, the released woman, a chronic drug addict from Dublin in her 20s, protested that because it was almost 7pm no hostel would take her for the night.
The woman then tried to scale the gate of the prison to get back in, prompting prison staff to call gardaí.
When officers from nearby Mountjoy Garda station arrived, the woman took a scissors from her bag and threatened to cut herself.
She was arrested and spent a night in the cells at the Garda station. She appeared before the courts on public order charges the following morning and was remanded in custody back to the Dóchas Centre.
She has since been transferred to the female unit in Limerick Prison. The original sentence from which she was freed four months early has been reactivated.
She is also being held on remand in relation to the public order incident outside the Dóchas Centre and for producing a weapon, in the form of the scissors, during the incident.
She has almost 20 previous convictions, some for drug-related thefts which featured knives.
The sentence she is now back in jail serving is a six-month term for theft. With remission she was not due for release until September.
She was just four weeks into that sentence when the decision was taken to release her with no advance notice.
It is believed the decision by the prison service to release the woman was taken in response to her “unhealthy interest” in a member of Dóchas staff.
Several staff at Dóchas contacted the prison service on the day the release was ordered, May 25th, to raise concerns about releasing the woman early against her will and in view of her background.
The prison service insisted she be freed and the forced release was carried out.