Serial killer in coma to be tagged

PILOT SCHEME:A NOTORIOUS serial killer in a coma in hospital under prison guard is to be among a small group of inmates to be tagged in a pilot project by the Irish Prison Service.

Geoffrey Evans (67), who along with fellow Englishman John Shaw was jailed in 1978 after abducting two women and raping and murdering them in Galway and Wicklow in 1975, has been in a coma for the past 16 months.

Evans is in Dublin’s Mater hospital where he was been guarded around the clock by shifts of two prison officers since he failed to recover from a heart bypass operation during which he had a stroke.

Evans and Shaw were caught by gardaí in Galway as they prepared to abduct a third woman. They told gardaí they planned to abduct and kill a woman every week if they had not been caught.

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern yesterday announced that Evans would most likely be among a group of 20 inmates to be electronically tagged as part of a new pilot system.

“We are considering it in his position because there are very substantial prison service resources in place in monitoring him in hospital,” he said.

He appreciated Evans had been jailed for very serious offences but there was no suggestion the prison service’s approach to him was being eased. However, Evans was in a coma and tagging would negate the need for prison officers to guard him there. The cost of the guard is €900,000 a year, according to the prison service.

Mr Ahern did not think there were moral issues involved in tagging somebody in a coma. It would benefit Evans’s dignity not to be constantly guarded, he said.

If the pilot tagging is successful, criminals could be tagged for periods of temporary release to alleviate prison overcrowding. Prisoners could also be sentenced to periods of tagging rather than being sent to jail, or they could be released from jail early under condition they are tagged and their movements restricted.

The inmates to be included in the pilot scheme will be low risk. None will be sex offenders, apart from Evans.

Mr Ahern said the pilot tagging scheme would be run under global positioning system technology. The pilot would go out to tender in May, would begin in July and would be assessed for the remainder of the year and into next year.

Director general of the Irish Prison Service Brian Purcell said the cost of the scheme could not be revealed because it was commercially sensitive.

Mr Ahern said it was an expensive system and it was important to take time to make sure the preferred option worked effectively.

In his address to delegates at the Prison Officers Association annual conference in Killarney, Co Kerry, Mr Ahern urged prison officers to think carefully about how they would vote during an upcoming ballot of members on the public sector pay deal.

Delegates yesterday voted overwhelmingly to recommend the rejection of the deal to the rest of the State’s prison officers. The association will now ballot its 3,300 members on the deal.

Mr Ahern’s address was met with silence by delegates, with just a handful of Irish Prison Service officials applauding.