Prison Report Slams Inhumane Conditions

The recently published Office of the Inspector of Prisons report highlights the disgraceful conditions in Irish prisons.

The vast majorty of men and 95% of women in prison are in there for non-violent crimes yet they face brutalising conditions at the hands of the prison system.

The inspectors visited 6 prisons finding a general lack of activity for prisoners, shortages of staff, particularloy mental health workers and little or no psychiatric care.

In Mountjoy they found prisoners doubled up in single cells. People were sleeping on cell floors next to a toilet and the toilets were not partioned off, meaning prisoners ate, slept and used the toilet in a crowded cell.

This is classed as degrading and humiliating treatment and an infringement of human rights. The inspectors found that 2 prisoners in Mountjoy had been in solitary confinement for 70 days.

They said conditions in the prison amounted to “degrading treatment”.

In Cork the inspectors were met with “unprecedented overcrowding” with prisoners not provided the minimum space set by international law. Many prisoners only got 2 hours a day outside their cells.

In Cloverhill Dublin there were 27 prisoners sleeping on floors and 60 prisoners were expected to share just 6 showers meaning they had “no time” to access daily showers.

There was much violence and tension in the overcrowded conditions and prisoners of different categories were mixed together.

The prisoners were only given between 1 to 3 changes of underwear a week and were forced to wash their underwear in the sinks in their cells if they wanted to maintain some dignity.

There as no nurse on nights at the prison and no chief nurse officer employed at all at the time of the inspection. The inspectors found Cloverhill to be in breach of the European Commission for the Prevention of Torture guidelines.

The women’s prison Dóchas is supposed to have a more relaxed regime because 95% of women are in prison for minor crimes like shoplifting or handling stolen goods, yet the inspectors found a regime “akin to the men’s prisons”.

The report said the prison was “overly punitive” and imposed a “restrictive regime” on the women. The women are regularly locked out in the yard for hours on end in all weather with no shelter available.

The Healthcare Committal Unit had “very poor conditions”.

The only prison that came out with a good report was Shelton Abbey which has a more progressive regime and therefore less violence between inmates and against staff. Prisoners reported “feeling human again.”

The purpose of prison under capitalism is not the reform of the prison population but the punishment of the victims of neoliberalism. It’s no coincidence that the vast majority of prisoners are from the poorest working class estates.

Neoliberal capitalism is all about privatisation, outsourcing and running down of public services and public housing. The ghetto-isation of the poorest estates was an intentional means of pushing workers out of public housing into the hands of private landlords and the banks.

In the 1960s the Dáil debated closing down many Irish prisons because they were no longer needed. The number of people in Irish prisons was just 750 in 1970; 1,200 in 1980; 2,100 in 1990; and 2,948 in the year 2000. In 2022 it was 4,122.

It rose as the post war boom collapsed, stable jobs disappeared from our inner cities and drugs came in at the end of the 1970s, just as people were losing hope.

Government after government has said that science shows prison should be used only as “last resort” yet they can’t resist using law and order panics to stir up support for their criminal system.

Even Sinn Féin play along with the moral panic, calling for more Guards in the inner city. Yet there is no correlation between more Guards and less crime. We had far less Guards in the 1960s and far less crime.

We also had stable communities, stable jobs, high levels of unionisation and class struggle.

Central Statistics Office figures show that 61% of the inmates released from prison in 2017 had reoffended by 2020. You put people back into the same circumstances, without any support and now facing homelessness and unemployment, what do you expect to happen?

Stop locking up homeless women for shoplifting, stop locking up people committing non-violent crimes to feed a habit, stop locking up people who can’t pay a fine. But the criminal classes at the top would rather brutalise the victims of their system.

Prisons don’t stop crime. They create it. A socialist society would only detain those who were a real threat to themselves and others. Most crime would disappear if people were housed and healthy and engaged in productive work.#

James O’Toole’s book “Guards - the biggest crime gang in Ireland” is available from our store.