Reports warn of overcrowding in State's prisons

Overcrowding in some of the State's prisons is so acute that in Cork Prison six inmates are sharing cells with no in-cell sanitation, the Prison Visiting Committee reports for 2003 have revealed.

Many mentally-ill people are being committed to Irish prisons because of a shortage of beds at the Central Mental Hospital. In the Midlands Prison in Portlaoise, some 80 per cent of inmates are serving sentences for drug-related crime, yet there is no drug treatment programme at the 515-bed facility.

There were six deaths within the prison service last year, five of which were inmates, according to the visiting committee reports. The sixth, Mr Sean Kelly, the farm manager at Shelton Abbey in Wicklow, was killed in a workplace accident last November. Three of the inmate deaths were suicides. Inquests will determine cause of death in the other two cases.

Prison visiting committees are appointed by the Minister for Justice. They visit a particular prison throughout the year and submit a report to the Minister at the end of every year.

The St Patrick's Institution visiting committee notes that many inmates there cannot read and write and some cannot even construct an oral sentence. Despite this there is a shortage of teachers at the jail. In Portlaoise Prison, Block D was condemned 40 years ago as being unfit to hold inmates yet it is still being used for that purpose.

Little or no forward planning is being done to prepare inmates for their release, according to a number of the visiting committee reports. In Limerick Prison, for example, the visiting committee noted that it cost €1,300 to keep an inmate in jail for just one week. Yet inmates leave jail with little or no financial resources, making it very difficult for them to reintegrate into society.

In the Dochas Centre, the female wing of Mountjoy Prison, many released inmates end up homeless and reoffend in order to return to prison.

Overcrowding is a problem in a number of jails. At Castlerea Prison in Roscommon up to 200 inmates were housed at some points last year in accommodation designed for 146 beds. In Cork Prison 270 inmates are living in a facility designed for 150 beds.

The visiting committee reports, which have been obtained by The Irish Times, reveal chronic shortages in staffing and resourcing levels across the prison service in key areas such as health, education and mental health.

The reports' contents are revealed on the same day the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, is due to address the annual conference of the Prison Officers' Association in Ennis, Co Clare.

Many of the visiting committees were also critical of the fact they have not been permitted to visit a second institution during the year, due to financial constraints within the prison service.

The Minister's decision to close Spike Island in Cork Harbour and the Curragh Place of Detention in Kildare during the year, for budgetary reasons, was met with criticism. Mooted plans to close Shelton Abbey in Wicklow and Loughan House in Cavan - both open prisons - were also criticised.

The visiting committee at the Curragh Place of Detention said the many elderly offenders who were held at the jail "would find larger institutions more intimidating and would find such a transition very traumatic".

The committee at Shelton Abbey noted: "In closing open centres you cut off an important lifeline for long term offenders who can avail of the rehabilitative facilities and use it as a stepping stone back into society."

At St Patrick's Institution, the visiting committee said it feared the closure of Spike Island and mooted closure of the two open prisons mean inmates from St Patrick's would no longer have any opportunity to be transferred to "more suitable locations".