Prison chaplains hit out at 'dehumanising' conditions
Juvenile offenders are suffering serious damage and utter boredom in a dehumanising institution, it was claimed tonight.
The Irish Prison Chaplains, in their annual report, said that budget cuts had led to the closure of workshops at St Patrick’s Institution in Mountjoy.
Spokesman Fr Declan Blake said the juvenile offenders were left to wander around the exercise yard, doing nothing.
“They are getting very frustrated and there’s more tension and fights,” he said.
Fr Blake, who is the chaplain at the Arbor Hill Prison in Dublin, said there was no commitment to rehabilitating young prisoners.
Around 217 teenagers aged between 16 and 21 are held in St Patrick’s, with most of them coming from deprived backgrounds.
In their annual report, the prison chaplains said the shameful regime had to be urgently addressed.
“Justice is not served when young offenders are imprisoned in an archaic regime that offers little or no positive intervention, and later returned to society further damaged and violated.”
Prison chaplains said they had consistently expressed their frustration at the cripplingly slow rate of progress in the prison system.
“It seems strange to us that as a nation we would continue to spend vast sums of money on a system that is not working, and that we demand no accountability for this vast prison expenditure.”
This spending includes the installation of new electronic gates and security cameras at Mountjoy Prison, which is soon to be demolished.
The chaplains said half of the prison population had a history of homelessness, and that significant numbers were struggling with chronic drug addiction and psychiatric illness.
“Irish prisons have become a dumping ground for the mentally ill and those struggling to cope be it through homelessness, addiction, or vulnerability.”
Their annual report raised concerns about the lack of treatment for the mentally ill and the shortage of counsellors for other prisoners.
It pointed out that three young men serving sentences in Mountjoy died from cancer during the past year and that prisoners in poor health were often left waiting some time before being sent to see a specialist.
The chaplains said the practice of holding people in prison before deporting them was shameful.
“Although they have committed no crime, they may be held for up to eight weeks and are subject to the same regime as those in custody on criminal charges.”
One man awaiting deportation was brought to Cloverhill Prison but collapsed and had to be transferred to Tallaght Hospital.
A psychiatrist recommended that the man should be transferred to the Central Mental Hospital for treatment but this was not permitted under the Immigration Act, and he was deported to Britain instead.
“Within hours of this deportation we were given to believe that this vulnerable man would be homeless on the streets of Manchester,” the report said.
It called for a proper and honest evaluation of the incarceration system before a single brick of the new super prison was laid down in north Dublin.
