THE SEIZURE of more than 2,100 mobile phones in the State’s prisons last year should be seen as a positive development, the Department of Justice has said, following claims from Fine Gael that smuggling in jails here was rife.
Figures released by the department show that a total of 2,174 were seized in or on entry to the State’s 14 prisons last year.
Almost half of these (904) were confiscated from visitors or inmates at Dublin’s Mountjoy jail, where a further 54 mobile phones were discovered by prison officers in the first 17 days of this year.
A response to a parliamentary question from Fine Gael justice spokesman Charlie Flanagan revealed 309 mobile phones were seized at Limerick prison last year.
A total of 228 were uncovered at Wheatfield in west Dublin and a further 121 were seized at St Patrick’s Institution in the capital.
Section 36 of the Prisons Act, 2007 states that it is an offence for prisoners to have unauthorised possession of or to use mobile telecommunication devices. It is also an offence to supply such a device to a prisoner, which can be punished by a fine of €5,000, 12 months imprisonment or both. As of January 20th, a total of 53 people were serving sentences for the offence.
Cell and area searches for contraband such as mobile phones take place in all prisons on a daily basis, the department said.
Mr Flanagan said the smuggling of contraband into prisons was of grave concern and that the figures were “proof positive” that criminals could remain in business even after being sentenced.
“These figures are an appalling indictment on the Minister for Justice [Dermot Ahern],” he said. “Criminals will continue to use mobile phones in our prisons because even when caught the chances of being charged and found guilty are minuscule. It is unacceptable our penal system can be abused to this extent.”
A spokesman for Mr Ahern said the fact that 2,174 phones had been seized on the way into or in prison indicated that detection systems were working . “The very fact that they were seized is positive. It would be preposterous to suggest this is a bad thing,” he said. “What would be worrying from the Minister’s point of view would be if no phones were being seized.”
Mr Ahern’s spokesman said new scanners had been introduced to detect contraband smuggling and that signal blocking equipment was now in use.
Mr Flanagan said the attempts made to prevent criminals communicating with associates outside had been “an abject failure”.
