Prison officers are feeling increasingly threatened during their work as overcrowding, and the tension and violence it fosters on prison landings, continues to increase, the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) has said.
The organisation was speaking after an officer was wounded by a prisoner who had fashioned an improvised sharpened weapon for a planned escape attempt while being escorted to a medical appointment in Dublin on Monday.
Convicted killer Graham McEvoy (25) - who murdered his best friend in a 2016 knife attack - was being escorted from Mountjoy Prison, north Dublin, to the Swiftcare Clinic in nearby Stoneybatter when he attacked the officer. He produced the weapon and wounded the officer below the eye as he attempted to flee from the clinic’s grounds.
Prison officers who were on the escort party managed to restrain McEvoy and he was returned to Mountjoy while the injured officer was taken for medical treatment. While the attack was still under investigation by the Irish Prison Service (IPS) and the Garda, it is understood the shiv - a makeshift weapon - had been fashioned from a plastic or wooden toilet brush or similar.
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“He’s in a stable condition, we’re hoping he’ll make a full recovery and, as you can understand, this is a very traumatic time for him and his family,” said POA president Tony Power of his injured colleague.
He added there was a “huge increase in assaults on prison staff”, in the order of 46 per cent between 2021 and last year, or 91 attacks to 134. Some 61 prison officers were injured during the same period, up 39 per cent.
“These were officers going in to break up fights between two prisoners or assaults on an officer,” he said. When prisoners injured officers in attacks they were often charged and convicted in the courts. However, Mr Power said the sentences imposed on them were concurrent to the ones they were already serving “meaning there’s no extra jail time for the attacks on the officers”.
Mr Power cited overcrowding as one of the key reasons behind the increase in attacks, saying it was a “vicious cycle”. He said it “provides the perfect atmosphere for a bully to thrive” and put “huge pressure” on vulnerable prisoners and their families to smuggle in weapons and drugs under threat of violence.
While overcrowding had been alleviated during the pandemic - by the early release of prisoners to create the extra capacity required for quarantining prisoners with Covid-19 - it had now returned. In recent years additional courts had been opened and more judges appointed, with further appointments to come as well as more gardaí to be recruited. Mr Power said all of those developments would lead to more people being sentenced by the courts and the prison population continuing to grow.
He added the Dóchas Centre women’s prison on the Mountjoy campus in Dublin had 162 prisoners at present. However, the jail had a capacity of 145, although that had been increased - by adding bunk beds - from an initial capacity of 105.
While the IPS opened a new wing in Limerick Prison last week, the additional capacity it created “isn’t even going to put a dent” in rates of overcrowding. Over 200 prisoners were sleeping on mattresses on floors of jails each week for lack of beds across the prison system.
While Minister for Justice Simon Harris announced last week four new prison units would be built, that project would take five years but “overcrowding is a crisis today”, Mr Power said.
The POA believed if a regime management plan was implemented - unlocking the prison in sections based on the prisoner-to-prison-officer ratio on the day - it would be of assistance. However, Mr Power conceded it was “inevitable” this would lead to prisoners being locked up in their cells for longer periods. He said prisoners willing to engage with educational and rehabilitative services in jail would be prioritised for most “out of cell” time. Those who did not want to engage “would spend that little bit longer behind the door”.
The Irish Prison Service said it was aware of “an incident that occurred with an escort from Mountjoy Prison” on Monday. “An Garda Síochána have been informed and therefore the Irish Prison Service cannot comment on an ongoing investigation,” it added.
The prisoner involved in the attack, McEvoy, Captain’s Road, Crumlin, Dublin, was convicted of murdering Paul Curran (23) at Seagull House on Crumlin Road in July, 2016. In December, 2017, then aged 19 years he pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to the manslaughter of Mr Curran. However, he was convicted of murder and jailed for life. Following the verdict, McEvoy told his family in court: “Don’t worry, it’s only an extra few years.”
